Myths of British ancestry

Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands

Read Stephen Oppenheimer’s follow-up to this article here, in the June 2007 edition of Prospect, as he answers some of the many comments and queries readers have sent in response to his analysis. You can also find out more about his work here, at the Bradshaw Foundation website.

The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?

Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.

Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.” What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.

The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.

Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.

Many myths about the Celts

Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).

If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?

The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.

Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La Tène culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.

Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the “Keltoi,” he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.

The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German “Empire of the Celts” to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.

De Jubainville’s Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. “Celt” is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.

This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.

Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.

Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of “iron-age Celtic invasions” from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.

Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?

The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.

The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with “rivers of blood” descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.

But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated—culturally, linguistically and genetically—by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn’t mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.

The genocidal view was generated, like the Celtic myth, by historians and archaeologists over the last 200 years. With the swing in academic fashion against “migrationism” (seeing the spread of cultural influence as dependent on significant migrations) over the past couple of decades, archaeologists are now downplaying this story, although it remains a strong underlying perspective in history books.

Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.

The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.

When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.

When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent “sexual apartheid.”

The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.

Who was here when the Romans came?

So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar’s time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul “the language differs but little.”

The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.

Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.

A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.

So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.

Note: How does genetic tracking work?

The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past. Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.

Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.

Comments

g.sylvester

November 17, 2009 at 20:41

I enjoyed this article very much.During my working life,I travelled around Europe where my Accent/Origon clashed with the long -held belief that if one is "Irish" one's name should reflect it.I learned that in Germany my name was readily identified as"The Woodsman" & in Sweden as "the Man who came in from the Woods".This might indicate North Europe origon . In Italy however,I was told it was quite common--including a Pope.You can see how enjoyably provocative your Article is.After 75 years you've started the old "Grey Matter" moving again.Thanks, Yours Sincerely,George Sylvester.(52 yrs. in England--and loves it ! )

Jane Walsh

November 21, 2009 at 10:43

Oppenheimer's theories are a nonsense and yet another attempt to grab the headlines by re-writing history. One only only has to stand English and Scandinavian people side-by-side to see the striking similarities. This is particularly true among children. A similarity very different when comparing the English with the Southern French, Spanish or Italians.

Karl Aritz

January 14, 2015 at 04:51

Your statement is provincial. Just go to Elizondo or Amorebieta in the Basque provinces to see for yourself people like myself that have blue eyes, brown, red or blond hair, freckles, tow head toddlers and men that reach 6 feet to 6 feet 10 inches height. And yes, we have pale white skin with Intelligence Quotion above 125 to 160.

cpbm

December 2, 2009 at 15:37

@Jane Walsh
Oppenheimer writes above
"Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans."
He clearly acknowledges the Scandinavian influence on the genetics in Great Britain, particularly in the north. Personally, I notice many similar traits among the British and south western Europeans. Take dark curly hair and large noses and there are plenty of darker skinned Englishmen than most people take note of. But of course his genetic study speaks for itself.
@g.sylvester
Your anectode is very entertaining but is about languages. Oppenheimer's study is on genetics which as he implies might act independently of languages and hence culture.
"There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement"
The base of the English vocabulary is very closely related to Frisia and northern Germanic tribes.

Trevor Needham

December 7, 2009 at 08:01

Far from being nonsense, Stephen Oppenheimer's genetic view of history/pre-history at last takes us beyond the speculative theories previously derived from small and often misleading glimpses through the frustratingly incomplete archeological record.
Yes, it may well mean re-writing the history books, and many people will find this hard to swallow. Let's face it, many people are still struggling with Darwinian evolutionary theory 150 years later. But I find it all enormously exciting and I am keeping my eyes and ears, and especially my mind, well and truly open.
Thank you Stephen Oppenheimer for a new way of looking at our origins.

mo george

December 15, 2009 at 10:06

oppenheimer's theory ignores lots of evidences that have proved a mass migration from Europe indeed took place in the fifth and sixth century....and Bede (7th century)just 100 years after these events took place should be in a good position to describe them.

BJ Mac

December 20, 2009 at 02:57

Surely Spanish stereotypes would have had racial mixing with subsaharan and saharan racial types and doing the side by side comparison of childrens features would take no account of this mix. This mixing clearly would clearly be less pronounced with northern europeans from scandnavia. Prejudices are terrible things to erradicate.

John

December 24, 2009 at 05:36

i've always been struck by the difference between most Britons from most Scandanavians. As Britain has been in relative genetic isolation for thousands of years it is to be expected to have ended up with its own distinctive looks.
As for southern Europeans, which Italians and which Spaniards are you comparing? - go around those countries and you'll be amazed by the regional diversity of looks, and I've seen plenty who would not look out of place in France, Britain or Germany - they just tan well.

Wayne

January 21, 2010 at 01:41

Genetic is a very fascinating way of classifying people and their migrations. I have been studying Celtic history as a specialist subject for most of my adult life and so feel quite qualified to speak on the matter. One thing I have noticed regarding all these genetic studies which are currently being undertaken, is that when dealing with ancient groups such as the Celts the first mistake that is made is that you are searching for a \race\. I doubt that in a period even as far back as the neolithic that many isloted races existed by then. What the studies prove is that ultimately most people are descended from various general stocks. However witin each stock unique cultures and languages may occur whic are then shared and sipersed from the point of origin (s). It is much like one street developing decorating styles that differ from their neighbours despite the fact that genetically there isnt much difference. Therefore it is, and has always has been a waste of time to try and prove or disprove racial differences between Europe and British Islanders. A blackbird comes from the same ancestor as the emu - ultimately but they dont sing or even act the same. Celtic migration into Britain and Ireland cannot be therfore disproved or proved by genetics as a reliable migration indicator in my opinion. Your work confirms a common heritage of ANCIENT ancestry but these results are way to old to relate to a bronze age and iron age culture.

Sakara Gold

January 28, 2010 at 15:54

A brilliant article, well researched and entirely believable. And there I was thinking that the Romans had slaughtered the inhabitants of south-eastern Britain after the Boudicca Revolt to prevent a repetition and had re-populated the countryside with saxon mercenaries. Who were the barbarians, the Celts or the Romans!

Linda Dale Burns

February 28, 2010 at 03:23

Having just received my results from the Megamtdna testing from the Genographic Projects Family Tree DNA, I find this article very interesting. My mothers family immigrated to the U.S. in 1922 from Northumberland, England, having lived there as far back as I have been able to go in the 1600's. Her grandfather came from Sussex tho. It was said he was of ancient French descent. My mother and her sister and the grandfather are very dark haired, tanning darkly with large Roman noses. Our mtdna is J2b1a1. Some female family names were Carmichael, Cole, Fail, McKenzie, Johnson. We look more Basque or Mediterranean than Germanic.

chris jones

March 15, 2010 at 02:41

what a typically arrogant english historian!! i switched off when he described england as england.england obvioulsy didnt exist at this time,it was just britain.as a historian he really should have got the basics right.this is typically pompous and speculative work with no hard evidence

JC Loach

April 4, 2010 at 16:15

I found Stephen Oppenheimer's article fascinating, quite a change from academia's tendency to rely upon the assumption that what they were taught at university is indisputable 'fact', much like the Victorian scientists who stated as fact that gorillas did not exist.
One minor note, Britain is named for the Roman name for the British Isles, Britannia, so 'Britain' wouldn't have existed in the dim and distant either. I would assume that the word England was used in order to allow Mr Oppenheimer to specify in simple terms where he was talking about.

markus wallett

April 20, 2010 at 22:58

If the ancestors of the English were in the minority, then the British tongue (Welsh) would have prevailed over 3 or 4 generations. There's no doubt that there was an indigenous "British" survival when the Germanic invaders came over in waves between the fifth and seventh centuries and carved themselves out a country called England, but I think the British population numbers were small. The only way to solve this is to test every white member of the population in the UK, then we'll know for sure.

Barry

May 4, 2010 at 01:37

Oppenheimer is no geneticist, infact the last i heard he was/is a pediotrician.Oppenheimer says that English as a fourth branch of Germanic could have been spoken in Britain for tens of thousands of years; that clearly is utter nonsence, since proto-Germanic dates to the bronze age.Furthermore he is no historian either, it has been established beyond dispute that the earliest identifiable Celtic culture did first appear in central Europe, there is ample evidence for this.
Oppenheimer dismisses myths of Anglo-saxon origins very quickly claiming its all welsh propaganda, yet he seizes on the words of Tacitus and Julius Caesar, whom many would consider more unreliable than Gildas-Bede etc.
Its quite possible that some pockets of Germanic speakers were in England in Roman times and indeed late preRoman times, but quite mad to say tens of thousands of years ago.
The Romans were in Britain for four hundred years, Latin was the language of the legions and was the language of law and the government, yet for all that, latin did not replace welsh; but we are asked to believe that a tiny minority elite; less sophisticated than the Brits, in less than half the time the Romans were in Britain managed to impose or somehow make their language widespread? utter nonsense.

Michael

April 28, 2015 at 05:35

I believe this man has an agenda. As far as I'm concerned his claims are part of a deliberate policy to disenfranchise the native English people, and his study result has more to do with politics than scholarship or genuine research .
It's perfectly obvious to me, just by observation, that a large proportion of the people in England and the Scottish borders are of English descent, as has been shown by so many previous scientific studies.

barnstormer

May 29, 2010 at 20:24

If the Anglo Saxons were settled in Britain before and during Roman times, how come there are so few Latin borrowings into the language. Welsh is full of Latin borrowings yet Anglo-Saxon - which according to Oppenheimer flourished in the most romanised part of Britain - doesn't.
Of course Oppenheimer ignores Sims-Williams' book on Celtic placenames in Europe, surely because it blows his theory out of the water. No doubt his theories appeal to the English nationalists but they don't stand-up to scutiny.

Paul Metcalfe

May 30, 2010 at 19:15

Jane Walsh says Oppenheimer's theory is nonsense as you only have to stand English people and Scandinavian people side by side to see the likeness. Firstly away from East Anglia and Lincolnshire more children are not blonde than are. In Scandinavia most children are blonde with higher cheek bones.
Secondly you are comparing Mediterranean people with the English. The original Basques were not Mediterranean unlike today where there is a considerable Latin DNA influence.

Michael

June 25, 2010 at 14:17

Yes I agree with the findings, truth is where's the evidence of what language people spoke before the Romans, Anglo-Saxons arrived here. It not as though ordinary people wrote things down. The Celts to me are a language, culture not a ethnic group or people. These genes have simply been here a long time and there are genetic similarities across northern Europe. Germanic speakers could of come into Britain at any date. It politics and historical ideas that separate people not genes.

robert

June 26, 2010 at 15:16

fascinating article but i am quite amazed at how many people are taking this story as gospel. One, oppenheimer is not a qualified geneticist nor historain, two; 'gene tracing' is still somewhat of a very rudimentary science with various differing opinions and interpretations on the same subject. three; people in this modern climate are so eager to believe on first glance 'evidence' that dispiutes the norm, whether or not this is influenced by modern social-political ideas one can only begin to imagine. Many modern scientists are so eager to dispute historical opinions due to political influences to deny us all a common heritage. according to some the white race doesnt even exsist but is merely caucasian, ignoring completley the fact that outside europe most in the middle east and north africa and caucasus have been 'mongrelised' to use of a better term with african and orientals,but still maintaining there white features. What has this got to do with the above article you may ask; well its has got precisely EVERYTHING to do with it, the fact that common sense,historical and linguistics are ignored in determing heritage and the same misguided moves to deny us our roots. linguistics in a lot of cases are a prominent decider in affirming genetic heritage. but the fact is everyone knows that the ancient british came from the iberian peninsular,whats new??? the oldest myths even state it, but these iberians holed up in the mountains were just the advancement of more 'white' tribes coming in from the east. and germanics were another aspect of these. another notion that hasnt even got a mention here is that the gene pool of the original inhabitants no matter how diluted and assimilated will always remain strong!! thats a fact.. so celts,saxons and angles could of well came over in vast numbers as many historical records state and assimilated with their genetic cousins. many people in england and infact the whole of the british isles look like germans,northern spanish, scandinavians...we all look similar, because we are all from the same originally!!!!ok some mighthave different hair or shapes of faces but we are all vaguely similar... some of the comments here have stated that many english look like southern mediteraneans, and some incling we are as dark? if you ask the majority of spanish they would proclaim temselves as white and tanned but the fact is that many in southern spain and italy notably scilily have got mixed heritage due to north african moors raping and colonizating the population during their invasion.so to compare the english to certain southern med people is ludicrous at best, scandalous at worse. fact is the entire isles are a mixture of celtic and germanic now but still retaining their original neolithic genteic markers, so oppenheimers article is stating what we already know but trying to aggravate what is also fact, that celts and germanics have contributed significantly to our gene pool but not massively over ran it, but due to the fact that they already from the same stock as the neolithics it doesnt really show, apart from innorthern countries where their halotypes regarding hair colour are more significant as they were the original settlers and not their iberian cousins.......common sense tells you we are all the same poeople.....how hard is that to understand

Fernando

July 10, 2010 at 18:37

As a Spaniard, do not think I really feel confortable with any genetic relationship with the English (it would be different with the Irish), but that is just cultural. I just wanted to comment that it might be helpful to relate that theory with the origin, spread and datation of the megalithic architecture and art of Western Europe.

connor

July 19, 2010 at 11:02

So basically what he is saying is that British and Irish people are not Caucasian then? As in, they predate the waves of Indo-European's who colonized Europe some time ago... Granted I am sure there is some "neolithic" ancestry but it wouldn't make sense for the British to be completely that one race, it doesn't make sense given the number of people who have settled there over years. I think his theory is kind of a stubborn and biased crock of shit if you are asking me. It has many holes in it.

connor

July 19, 2010 at 11:18

I concur with what chris jones said, a typical example of some mediocre oxford professor who thinks he knows every answer to every question ever pondered. His theory is definitely an acquired taste anyway, to say the least.

Luis

July 23, 2010 at 20:22

I find Oppenheimer's study very realistic. I am an argentine of spanish origin. My mother was galician and my father is asturian. They were born in regions often considered of "celtic" origin. My look matches that of many irish or other british people (pale skin, blue eyes and brown heair) and in my few travels to USA or europe, people found hard to believe I was "latin" (whatever that means). I am a strong believer in that the celtic heartland was located in northern spain / souther France, as Herodotus comment implied. There are hundreds of celtic place names in iberia, and many historic mentions of "celts" and "celtiberians" in the peninsula. On the other hand, there is hardly any historic evidence of celtic presence in the british isles. There isn't any mention of a british historical character considering himself a "celt" or calling his own people with this name. The point is, history, missconceptions ans stereotypes conspire to make a big confussion out of all this. The generalized notion of dark featured mediterraneans (spanish, portuguese, etc) vs nordic featured british is largelly inaccurate. There are millions of british peoples with dark features as well as many spaniards with light features, and this just demonstrates the millenarian mixture of peoples. I believe the first modern humans (cromagnon) achieved geneticall homogeneity in northern spain/souther france. Having different genotypes in this population (dark and light features) they reconquered much of western europe after the ice sheets retreat, including the isles (which were not yet isolated by the sea). Different phenomenoms such as genetic drift, population bottlenecks and/or social selection made those features change their proportion in different areas (causing more percentage of blue eyes in ireland, for example). But in general, all western europe keeps sharing the same genes. Basque and celts may have had different languages, but not differen genes. As said in the article, languages and races don't match always. Perhaps the spread of agriculture and other techniques helped the expansion of the celtic language into the west. We are more connected than we used to think. I believe that languages and accents contribute largely to our perception of people's ethnicity. I grew up in an argentine neighbourhood were many of my friends were of italian, german, polish, jewish, and even irish origin. Being all of us middle class kids with no socio-economic differences we never felt there were any difference amongst us while growing up. Actually, we all looked strickingly similar one another. It was only when we were becoming adults when our environment, the society, prejudices and stereotypes affected the perception we had of ourselves and the supposed differences we had. What I mean is, if we put many naked people in one room (spaniards, british, french, etc) with no clothes, no visible cultural signs and with their mouths shouted, any of us would find it very hard to tell the origin of any of them. Languages aside, we are all very similar.

al-dhabih

August 1, 2010 at 15:10

Ummm! I know for a fact that one of my ancestors arrived in East Sussex, from Normandy, in 1124 AD; the rest seem to have been located in York, Wales, & Ireland. I have never seen any Britons who looked like Basques; yet Galicians do. Language & Gene Pool do not always correspond. Cheddar Man's ancestors still live en situ. Perhaps we have enough failed Social Engineers, without trying to re-engineer history.

David Jenkin

MindYaSel

Andrew

August 2, 2010 at 15:43

There is nothing new about this article.
It is a regurgitation of the Nazi doctine of prehistoric nationalism and as such is an evil fantasy.
ALL the historical records tell us the Anglo-Saxons replaced the Romano-Celts.
You can dabble in archaeology, interpret linguistics, quote genetics - but all these are imprecise.
The written HISTORICAL records are clear and unambiguous.

Janclantara

August 8, 2010 at 14:36

If the Saxons had mass slaughtered 'all the natives', this would be in the archaeological record. However, mass graves on this scale are just not found (2 sites,in Chester and Norfolk show some violence...but not to the level of earlier mass graves from the Roman period or later ones from the viking era.)You can't trust writers such as Gildas, a cloistered monk; being a native he's hardly going to write, 'We let them have our land because we were afraid', now is he? If we believe Gildas, that means we must believe all ancient 'historians' such as Geoffrey of Monmouth--heck,we don't still believe Merlin built Stonehenge,do we?
Actually,away the dna side of things, VERY recent isotope testing on a bones from a bronze age ritual site in Kent has shown a mix of native born people, Iberians and Scandinavians. This would actually accord pefectly with the article above, with Scandinavians coming to the north and east coast long pre-vikings, and Iberians approaching from the western seaboard into south-western England.
I don't think British people look particularly Scandinavian or Germanic either, btw; some do, but there's a mix,and the further west in England you go, the more dark hair/eyes you find (this has been officially mapped out.) Certainly a fair amount of Welsh and Irish people DO look somewhat 'Spanish'(even the Romans noticed this in the Welsh and mentioned it!)--hence the mythical Irish tales of the Armada in the west. My own family are of this type,some even having black hair.
As for the guy trying to claim modern Spanish people are somehow 'mixed'; that flies in the face of recent dna testing,and besides that, the Moors were north African (caucasoid),AND I'm not so sure about his lurid rape n pillage fantasies either (the Moorish cities of Spain (which were in the SOUTH also)had sections for Jews,Christians and Muslims but seemed pretty fair overall--actually showing a LACK of mixing rather than the reverse.)
But back to British archaeology, it actually was known for YEARS that the people buried in long barrows were of a physical type known as Mediterranean, and probably came from Iberia via France (esp Brittany). I have books over 100 years old that state this! Things seems to have got more muddied in the early 20th C, when big migrations/extermination theories seemed popular--ie that iron age central European CELTS killed off the British/Irish aboriginal people (which if believed should have been a slap for those 'celts' who loved to bang on about the 'evil' Anglo-Saxons!)

si

si

August 18, 2010 at 16:27

chris jones says:
March 15, 2010 at 2:41 am
what a typically arrogant english historian!! i switched off when he described england as england.england obvioulsy didnt exist at this time,it was just britain.as a historian he really should have got the basics right.this is typically pompous and speculative work with no hard evidence
Wow Chris Jones what rubbish you are spouting.. England is England, and The English are English. Just facts nothing pompous. What is your agenda ? Additionally, if you read the article he was examining genes, which provide hard evidence.
People who make comments like you are subversive to the average Britan.

Valhalla_Next

September 10, 2010 at 18:59

Hahahhaha its pretty easy to get, the majority of the population of britain and western europe descends from the basque(R1b) hablogroup. although celts, romans, sarmatians, anglo-saxons , vikings and normans may have lived in britain they were to small in number to actualy kicked the britons(basques) out.
it doesnt take a genius to figure out the answer why the british population doesnt speak basque. all theese aryan people spoke and indo european language and the reason why they today in britain speak an indo european language is just beacause the aryanic peoples conquered britain with weapons and the basques were forced to learn indo european. for example just look at Turkey and Hungary the majority of the turkish population are byzantines(greeks) and the majority of the hungarians are a mixture of north iranian and thracians.
Greetings from Sweden a proud decender of the blond north iranians!

aperson

September 11, 2010 at 22:02

@chris jones: You idiot, he's describing the general area which would latter become England! Why whilst he's at it doesn't he just include India and Australia?
Duh! Because he's talking about events relating to the ENGLISH, but his book also relates to the rest of Britain, maybe you should read it like I have done instead of passing idiotic comments.

Fernando

September 13, 2010 at 11:38

@Daz: I don't understand your comment to mine. I just meant that historically Spaniards and the English have been very frequently enemies, and that we feel strong sympathy towards the Irish, also historically.
Not being an expert in Demography or Genetics, I just wanted to remark that there is a megalithic culture that spreads through Iberia, West of France and the British Islands, which is specific of western Europe, and whose origen could be related to people migrations, maybe accompanying a softening of climatic conditions after the last glaciation (probably, nobody lived in the British Isles 12.000 to 10.000 years ago).

Michael

September 18, 2010 at 16:04

Truth is a lot of genes like R1a, I1a and R1b were all here before the Romans. There is no evidence of a link to a haplogroup and a historic group of people as most of these people were all mixed haplogroups too. Oppenheimers information makes sense. We should stop dividing haplogroups as coming at particular historic periods. Language too I believe is older and has been in Britain for a lot longer - these later groups merely were taking over from previous already Germanic speaking groups - it makes sense. Mercian dialect in the West Midlands simply wouldn't have developed so distinctively as it was in the 7th century if the Anglo-Saxons had just arrived there, there wasn't time enough to develop.

Dave

September 20, 2010 at 07:50

Instead of using the abusive word Viking for the peaceful Danish and Norwegian settlers in Northern England and eastern counties in the Midlands why not use the abusive term white niggers instead? The Anglo-Saxon extermination myth is useful for the far right in excusing the extermination of Jews by the Nazis and more recent events in central Africa. If the Anglo-Saxons exterminated Celts then why not continental Germans exterminate Jews?

Michael

September 24, 2010 at 17:15

What seems to be quickly forgot is that Sutton Hoo and Beowulf show huge Scandinavian influences prior to the Vikings, yet because this doesn't fit a nice Celtic-Roman-Anglo-Saxon-Viking-Norman view of British history it is quickly brushed to one side. Who knows when Scandinavian influences came in after all Britain had been trading with northern Europe for thousands of years.

WALSH

October 26, 2010 at 16:12

For a start the genitic study done suggests that the Celts and Basque come from a common line .It is ment to suggest that the two are closely related and not that they are two seporate groups.The Basque and island celts have a common gene that covers both
"To try to work out where the Celtic population originally came from, the team from UCL, the University of Oxford and the University of California at Davis also looked at Basques.
"On the Y-chromosome the Celtic populations turn out to be statistically indistinguishable from the Basques," Professor Goldstein said."
They results of the study can be read here
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/1256894.stm
Oppenheimer once again not reading the results before he opens his mouth

Andrew

October 31, 2010 at 16:19

Just had a quick glimpse at the article. But the whole concept of the indigenous population of the entire British Isles i.e England, Scotland, Wales, both Irelands and the Isle of Man originating from the same base genetic stock would be simply too much from many sentimental Irish, Scottish and Welsh to accept. Even if there was numerous exhaustive and conclusive genetic studies supporting the concept scores of Irish and Scottish would continue to recite the banal and trite mantra that the Irish and Scots were Celts which makes them inherantly different from the Anglo-Saxon English and you would still have those revolting sentimental cultural abominations like \Celtic Fire\.

n0p

November 8, 2010 at 18:05

This is interesting. I have English and German ancestry but I've always been mistaken for having Mediterranean ancestry (Greek/Italian mostly). I'm not sure why but I have very, very dark hair and eyes. Maybe I have some ancestry I'm not aware of. This is interesting though and I'll continue to keep reading things.

Ghostmojo

December 3, 2010 at 19:37

Oppenheimer is on to something and people shouldn't be scared of it all. A thorough reading of his book (as opposed to just the article above) would help. He is not a revisionist Englishman (he explains his own mixed heritage) and approaches the subject in a calm, methodical and quite neutral manner. The only people getting uptight are narrowminded nationalists clinging on to some sense of pseudo-cultural superiority based upon poor Georgian/Victorian research making the supposed Celtic fringes somehow more ethnically pure and longer resident than much of England. If that is all tosh, then it is all tosh. Let's look for the truth with an open mind. I have mixed British (English/Welsh/French Hugenot/other) background and embrace new well-researched and argued views which replace old myths.

claus

Liz

December 7, 2010 at 01:56

Has anyone considered the impact of the Black Death in Europe? What about other pandemic diseases before and since? Perhaps the book mentions this, but I find it intriguing to think that we're the decendents of virtually a handful of people who survived a plague that decimated the population of Britain and much of Europe. Perhaps there are genes that died out with the plague, the survivors having a natural genetic resilliance to the desease? Maybe many gene markers that represented the old population of Europe didn't survive, so the modern population might not be fully representative of the gene pool of our prehistoric ancestors? I also think you need to test a much larger sample of the population to be sure of anything, these gene tests are hugely expensive, so many folks are not able to participate, myself included! I daresay the population of pre-Roman Britain was more varied than this article even suggests, bearing in mind the UK's position on the Western Atlantic as well as Northern Europe.
Speaking for myself, my recent immigrant ancestors came from Denmark (also Germany and Sweden via my Danish great grandmother) France and all the British so-called Celtic groups and I look as you'd expect a mixture of Nordic and Southern European. If it happened in the 19th C why not back in prehistory? I think the article has a point and from studying Anglo Saxon burials a little on my degree, as someone else mentions, there was little evidence of violence and hostility between ethnic groups suggesting they were well established before the 5th C.

Badger40

December 15, 2010 at 22:09

I've read as much as I can find on this subject, as well as Oppenheimer's other books.
As a HS science teacher, I extensively use several videos that deal with this subject, as well as the Out of Africa DVD, as a springboard after studying genetics to explore the origins of the human races in my 10th grade biology classes.
I loaned Oppenheimer's book on the British Origins to our English teacher.
She also teaches English Lit & Myths & Legends & I think it will enhance her presentation of those subjects.
I am eager to see more genetic research on the various human population groups of the world.
I find it a fascinating subject.

Badger40

December 15, 2010 at 22:24

According to that study, Walsh, the studied samples are not very numerous.
I think it would be prudent to have some more DNA samples, a lot more, analyzed & evaluated before calling Oppenheimer full of it.
And that study was in 2001.

R T Martin

January 25, 2011 at 21:59

Oppenheimer is media-magnet and a chavinist.
He's pushing crap science and selling crappy books.
The R1b haplogroup has its highest peak diversity in ASIA. It is NOT native to western Europe and British people are NOT Basques or whatever you want to call the remnant of the last ice age. It's never been proven, and is becoming increasly unlikely, that the Basque people themselves represent any sort of early post-ice age population.
The low-diversity, high concentration of R1b haplotypes in the Pyreenes is most likely the result of "other factors" that are easily demostrated in small populations. The founder effect is one.
Looks like we're back to conventional wisdom.
Old-fashioned, pen-and-paper science where facts matter more than selling books
This is an embarassing article.

Siegfriedson

January 30, 2011 at 21:13

@Andrew: "It is a regurgitation of the Nazi..."
Stopped reading at the word 'Nazi'. Anyway...
Perhaps the truth regarding the origins of the people of the British Isles (including Ireland) is not as complicated as we are all making it out to be.
The first inhabitants of these lands came over from continental Europe many thousands of years BC. They were the descendants of Cro-Magnon Man who had replaced the Neanderthal, either actively or passively.
Then came the great migration of the Indo-European ('Aryan') peoples into Europe from the Russian steppe. A branch of these Aryans, the Celts, settled in Britain and Ireland and were there when Caesar encountered them about 55 BC. They were in Ireland when the Vikings founded Dublin 800 years later.
After Caesar's landing, waves of successive Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Viking/Norman migrants settled in Britain.
So perhaps the truth is staring us in the face...the British and Irish peoples are simply a mixture of the above mentioned tribes/nations.

Bill Clogston

February 27, 2011 at 22:51

I agree totally with Oppenheimer. Winston Churchill wrote in his Birth of Britain" that a Saxon mercinary group was invited into Britain to settle a dispute between the natives. Apparently the natives didn't want to use their own men. After the battle the Saxons decided they liked the women and decided to stay. Having no land they settled in the ports, and their language intermingled with Latin became the language of commerce. Churchill said that the only reasom there was no Gaelic in use was because all the Britons spoke Latin. There is so much Latin in English that I believe him. As an aside I am sure you know that is how the Anglo Normans arrived in Ireland. They were invited in to help an Irish King keep this power. I think so many people want to think of themselves as wild, bloody conquerors and I can only wonder why.

Basque

March 2, 2011 at 05:18

Why are there some morons that are in denial? Look up who the basques were n youll feel proud...the basques are the original europeans,we unofficially discovered america,1st man to circle the globe sebastian elcano was basque,the stonehenge were built by ancient basques,we were the 1st seamen,hell the white race is founded on by the cromagons who gave rise to the basques and the basques gave rise to the so called "celts".The anglos etc sure brainwashed you...

Manuel Rosa

March 8, 2011 at 18:42

We as Portuguese also tend to ignore our recent gene associated discovery of being closely related to all western European, in fact by 2 Y haplogroups that account for some 4/5 our gene pool. We were told for the last 100 years that we were Mediterranean and African… today I ask myself if that wasn’t done with the clear purpose of justify our slavery past, which if fact, was no different from any other empire in history. We have 2 taboo’s the one I just mentioned and the other one is that we live in a hot, dry and almost African land… we, in this Atlantic, forested and green land, have rain from October to late April (especially north of the Tagus river), of course we can’t say this otherwise we won’t have tourists. They will prefer Africa… The Portugal that Brits know better (Algarve) is more different and people have darker skin… but the Algarve population accounts only with 3% of the total and the whole south with 8%. After this introduction I have to say that, in my opinion, indeed, we look different from Brits, no question about that but it comes from adaptation to a milder and sunnier climate. For sure our skin tone looks southerner. But please take this in consideration, maybe the next time you pay us a visit you take at us a different look. I live in central Portugal and I have 2 daughters and my family kind of is a micro cosmos of who we are here: two of us were really blond in early childhood, two of us have green eyes (a pair dark and another light), one of us has blue eyes, one of us has brown eyes, two of us have mild brownish skin, two of us have light brown skin, tree of us have dark brown hair and one of us have light brown hair. When my daughters went to kindergarten I did noticed that more or less half of the kids had blond hair but they kind of loose that tone before 6, so when they go to primary schools those tones almost disappeared, especially in the boys and it is not common to see adult males really blond. Women are more commonly blond but never as light as Scandinavians. We do have also people with really dark skin color. I can tell you some history now: the only peoples that really migrated here in numbers were the same ones that in this article you call Basques and Germanics (Goths and Sueves). In all the other cases there were people coming but is was in fact a kind of military occupation (Romans and Muslims). About the Muslims, in northern Portugal they took control, not for 8 centuries as it is commonly known, but for no more than 150-170 years. Coimbra was “reconquested” in 871, but it wasn’t an effective conquest until 1064. It became the border and all the lands south until the Tagus river stayed no man´s land for almost the next 200 years. My hometown Tomar, for example, was in that strip of land and was abandoned for 200 years. Anyway we do have some north African blood between 12 and 5% when you travel from south to north but today it is accepted that we got it well before Muslim invasion and as I told you, Roman, Muslim, Jewish, Greek and Phoenicians are all together nothing more than milk drops in a cup of coffee. Sorry about my English and I have to say that I don’t care if I’m more northerner or more southerner, I’m proud of my ancestry, of that “tribe” I belong to, no matter what!

fascinatin

March 9, 2011 at 10:48

u are gona think i am off my rocker but many experts say basque is the universal(literally) language n that all advanced languages derive from basque....fascinatin stuff especially if u are basque like myself.

Detretius

ben

March 11, 2011 at 21:00

While I find the ideas Oppenheimer presents in this essay very intriguing and worth taking a second look at, I am disinclined to change much my (and the prevailing) views regarding ancestry in ancient Britain. While it may be true that Celtic peoples did not even form a majority in Britain at these times (though we actually don't have enough evidence one way or another to say with certainty that this was or was not the case), I doubt very much that a small elite population from a different ethnic identity/language could not have had a great impact on the subsequent culture and heritage of later peoples living there. One only has to look at the small elite of English settlers and lords who decimated the Irish language use over the course of several generations, or the Conquistadors who with one swift stroke, managed to wipe out the cultures and languages of dozens of dominant peoples in Mesoamerica. It does not take a large population to eliminate a more indigenous culture - it only takes a minority elite with a penchant/desire to do so. Belief probably also plays a big part in how cultures interact - and we have little to no evidence of what these various peoples thought about each other at their initial meeting.

gorka

ibon

March 22, 2011 at 16:30

The Basques are the MOST unique genetic people in the entire world!
The Basques have the LONGEST THREAD OF CIVILIZATION IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!
The Basques are the MOST PURE FORM OF CRO-Magnon in the entire world!
The Basques have the OLDEST LANGUAGE IN The WORLD!
The Basques developed the FIRST high technology in the world...
They developed astronomical technology...such as the "Stone circle technology".....thousands of years before any other people!
The invented solar and lunar calculators thousands of years before any other race!
They invented the SAIL and harnessed wind power thousands of years before any other known people!
They invented the mirade of high technology needed to creat SEAWORTHY oceanic sailing ships.....tens of thousands of years before any other people!
It is now believed that they were the First HOMO-SAPIENS TO REACH THE "NEW WORLD"....AND THEY DIDNT JUST FOLLOW SOME GAME ACROSS AND ICE-SHEET........THEY BUILD SEAWORTHY SHIPS AND COLONIZED THE LANDS OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN....from north Africa.......to the Canary Islands....to Storm swept Islands of Ireland, England...Orkney....ect...ectc...
They beat the Viking by a good......10,000-20,000 years on ALL ACOUNTS!!!.....(the Vikings were very surprised to find these pale skinned dark haired sailors living on nearly every remote island they ever found!.....the Vikings called these tough little sailors....the Vanir)
The Basques developed some of the OLDEST ART in the world....
ohh...and BTW...its not just some crude stick from art....the painted caves of the Basque country are examples of VERY HIGH CULTURE.....These painting capture the essence of MOVEMENT...a entire skill set not found in any known population until relatively modern times.....(like the great master painters of Europe and Asia...in the 1400's).....and yet these painting clearly hold their own in skill and mental technique......to these later masters!
****JUST COMPARE THE ANCIENT BASQUE CAVE PAINTING TO ...the very best of the EGYPTIANS ever managed.....its like putting Leonardo again a school kid with a number 2 pencil!!(LOL)
...ohhh...and just for the cherry...they were painted at about 20,000 years PRIOR to them!
...ohhh and just in case you want TWO CHERRIES....these fantastic paintings..are not just paintings but rather are representativces of the SOLAR SYSTEM!!!!!!
(the HALL oF BULLS......is not just a painting of BULLS....its a representation of The constelation TAURUS......made circa~15,000BC!~!~!!!
....The Basques have NEVER BEEN CONQUERED!
The Summerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Etruscans, the Romans.....the Carthaginians.....etc...etc....etc.....All came and went...passed away into history........BUT THE BASQUES never were conquered by any great power...and outlasted them all!
I could go on and on and on and on....
I could go into the unique biology of the Basques....

vasco ibon

vasco ibon

April 10, 2011 at 05:50

The Basques are the original europeans and 80% of europeans descend from them.Etruscans were ethnic Basques and these people founded rome n taught the romans everything yet the romans took all the credit and glory wtf the basques created the 1st known civilization n now to finally drop ur jaw they also created egypt,mesopotamia,the indus valley n troy...enough said....research it if u think? i am off my rocker.....

basque guy

April 12, 2011 at 01:36

There is much to learn concerning the mythology and the magic-spiritual practices of the Basque peoples. They contain the archetypes from which all the knowledge of the world has emerged. Within the deep knowledge of this people it seems that are hidden the keys to open the secret doors of all the world Traditions. The genetic and ethnic-cultural constitution of the Basques, the remote origin of their language that seems to stem directly from the ancestral memory of the earth and possibly from words, sparks of life fallen from the gods of heaven, allow us to perceive a remote enchanted garden, beyond the barriers of time, inhabited by fantastic and wonderful creatures.

basque guy

April 16, 2011 at 09:43

Philology in 1984 and since 1994, genetics, demonstrated that Basque people are the direct descendants of the Homo Sapiens. Thus, the common roots of all the inhabitants of the planet are rooted in the Basque country. In 1995 National Geographic magazine published an article entitled The Basque: The first family of europe.
A recent DNA study of the British shows that their first ancestors came from the Basque country. Something their mythology had mentioned repeatedly. In the introduction and the epilogue of the last glaciation the widespread colonization of Europe was initiated from the Basque country.
In 1999, two American archaeologists established the thesis that America was populated by Basque sailors 20,000 years ago.
The current Cantabria can not hide its basque substrate. Its capital Sant-Ander, Castro Urdiales or Mazcuerras gives us an idea of which people settled there in the past.
In Euskera(Basque) ezpain(end,extreme), was used to refer to Spain, as the peninsula has always been the extreme land of the known world, the West. Hence the british named it Spain.
Throughout the whole basque country constitutes a real faculty of anthropology where all europeans and even people around the world are represented.
As a prehistoric people, they are jealous cultivators of their ancient traditions and festivities.
The fact that the Sanfermines(the running of the bulls) be recognized as the world's most universal festivity is genetically and chemically pure atavism.
Over the coming decades, the world will discover puzzled how cultural manifestations of humanity originated in Basque lands.
As a mother tongue of all european languages, Basque should become a compulsory subject for all European institutes and universities, replacing the Greek and Latin, which are sons, too,of the basque language.
I have always been surprised by the large number of basque names that are scattered around the world, and the similarity of basque with other very distant languages and parallel customs with other remote cultures. This can only be understood when we recognize that after the ice age basque people scattered throughout the world sharing their culture in the backpack. Denying it indicates ignorance and fanaticism. Archaeology, Genetics, philology and anthropology have the final say in this regard.
Nobody knows today that even in a british italian map of the eighteenth century,called greek ocean to Cantabrian Sea or Sea of biscay...when the Greeks never sailed this sea..
In the coming years,the world will discover and will be stunned how the ciclopes or titans both very talked about in classical mythology (which are recognized as ancestors of all rational people on the planet)built a bridge of over 300 ms. length, which served as a reference and model for all bridges, dams and aqueducts that antiquity has left us ... All this happened in the basque country for about 40 / 50,000 years thus before the last ice age ...which makes the bridge in question, not only the oldest known artwork in the history of mankind, but also the oldest architectural monument in the world, tens of thousands of years older than the oldest known megaliths , in rare cases over 7,000 years and this, alone, in the megalithic monuments of the Iberian Peninsula. The Egyptian pyramids do not exceed 5000 years old. Compare, then, with those 50,000 years ...
Do you understand better now why Basques like lifting stones of great weight and size?
If the Homo Sapiens was born and was forged as such in basque lands, only benefits will derive for our specie to reunite with the people and the culture that spawned him and made him like he is...
GO BACK TO YOUR ROOTS: visit, study, and learn to love the Basque country..because it is still your land..the land of all.
If Castile and, by extension the rest of Spain, is removed from its Basque substrate, it reduces to nothing ...
As undisputed cradle of all europeans, the basque country should host the headquarters of the council of europe and european parliament"

Bill Clogston

May 30, 2011 at 02:02

Hasn't anyone read Churchill's "Birth of Britain." He gives the most believable scenario on the origin of the English language. Churchill writes that the language of commerce (and indeed the spoken language) in early England was Latin. Remember that 500 years of Roman occupation. By the way, what happened to their descendents. Churchill goes on that two British or "Celtic" tribes, fueding, invited a mercenary group of Saxons in, with the Saxons taking sides and waging a battle. The winning Saxons would determine the winning Celtic side. History shows the Celts did that type of thing to save their own. Churchill wrote the Saxons liked the Celtic women and decided to stay, but having no land engaged in commerce which resulted in the huge Latin influence on the English languge sixty percent according to him. I also was taught in school a long ago that the Romans called the early natives of Britain the Latin word for Angles because they were universely red and blonde haired with blue eyes and blond haired. Check out the Latin word for yourself and see the closeness. By

john cornford

June 1, 2011 at 01:53

Nennius's "Historia Brittonum" - written in the 9th-10th C - refers to the pre-Roman myth that "Britain" derives from Brutus, son of Aeneas who sailed from Rome and Troy around Spain and whose descendents populated Britain.
Did I also read somewhere that the use of the chariot by the pre-Roman Britons was unique in N Europe ? (In other words it had been learned from those early Greek settlers)

James

June 4, 2011 at 07:27

I find the article interesting but not entirely correct. DNA results in the past do not go with what Mr. Oppenheimer says here. I do not belive that all Englishmen, Irishmen etc...are celtic or non celtic. There is no DNA for celt or german or roman. That is bullshit. The word celt came from the greeks to refer to 'barbarians' from the north. The romans came up with the terms 'teuton' meaning germanic today for people living east of the rhine and used the term celt or gaul for people living west of the rhine. In reality all western europeans are the same barbarians. As the romans documented celts and germans were of tall stature, bright haired, muscle build, and bright eyed. I doubt all of them appeared this way but to the roman soldiers their enemies [our ancestors in this case] were pretty scary looking ot them. The romans themselves were of the same stock at one time but were very influenced by the greeks.
Our mythologies are a great example of our similarities. Different names for dieties but they all represent the same meaning. I however find it hard to believe that I am not descended from barbarinas of any of these tribes and just descended from hunter gatherers from the basque region of spain. On top of this Basques are pretty much Gauls in Spain, maybe the last bastion of them? Genetics prove nothing when it comes to inheritence. As a Swede/Irish/English/French american I find and believe I have inherited a diverse heritage lol. Im proud of the barbarian roots wether they are basque, norse, irish, etc.... they are all great cultures, nationalities and worthy of their own praise!

V.W. Gravlin

July 10, 2011 at 21:40

Stephen Oppenheimer's analysis of the origin of the Celtic people sounds correct for the most part in that the Celts came from Anatolia [if indicated by blood type & DNA, but the Romans were fighting the Celts in Spain and the Phoenicians were trading & estabished the port of Barcelona around 1500 BC with a Celtic population. I see evidence that the Celts migrated from Spain to northern Europe and nearby France. The Celts or Basque population has a high incident of RH-, and Spain was the 1st and last site for Neanderthals. It's possible the RH- factor developed from inter-marriage between the Neanderthals & an original Celtic population tht came to Spain via northern coast of Africa.Extensive DNA & Y cromo studies have to be continued.
V.Gravlin, Florida

V.W. Gravlin

July 10, 2011 at 22:30

LIZ made a great comment about the impact that the Black Plague might have had on genetic/DNA analysis on English DNA as it wiped out half the population in Europe and from 1337 to 1339, the Black Plague wiped out 1/2 the population in Italy. The kill rate dropped to 20% or 30% over generations and by 1730's, the European population had antibodies but not cleaner living conditions. Liz appears to make the point that the black plague might have wiped out certain populations --perhaps a lot of Celtic descendants--that didn't have a high level of resistance. The Plague could wiped out other groups missing in the current genetic pool. My theory is that many groups migrated out of Northern Africa into Spain across Gibraltar. During the last Ice age 50,000 yrs ago, N. Africa was well watered and the Sahara was a well watered plain with giraffs and antelope according to the cave paintings found in the area. Other groups migrated along the East end of the Med. I read one article that mentioned that red hair was a Neanderthal gene and red hair shows up along the Viking trade & raid routes, Portugal having a high rate of red hair as well as the Scots and Irish. There are a lot of fascinating, intelligent comments. V. Gravlin, Jupiter, Fl.

basque guy on a mission

July 16, 2011 at 07:04

the cromagnons gave rise to the basques, the original white people and original europeans who settled in Atlantis, Egypt, Greece & Rome,troy,sumeria mesopotamia etc and laid down the foundations of? western civilisation.? The Basques were the first explorers too, known as the Vanir(the vikings considered them gods) to the Vikings n settled America n many places many thousands of years before the Vikings did. The Basques? have the original European language & the most rh-blood? and? first settlers to the British isles & Ireland.
U know this is a big deal n needs to be spoken about on tv etc
JUSTICE

basque guy on a mission

July 17, 2011 at 22:04

Basque villages were devastated by bombs,Franco's bombers pursued the ships, but they arrived safely. Basque children who were orphaned were adopted by the British people. God? gathers the various remnants of His chosen race in His own way and in His own good time. We leave our Basque brethren in the Pyrenees til the day when "Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed the? Lord has blessed."

Partridge

July 26, 2011 at 09:34

Turns out that Oppenheimer was wrong. He, not unlike Sykes, based his conclusions on the idea that a certain type of yDNA, namely R1b, which constitutes 65% of yDNA in England (not Britiain as a whole where it is even higher), is not found in the source populations of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, I.e. 'North-Western Germans', West Frisians, Scandinavians. It turns out that this assumption is flawed, as we now know, that R1b makes up 70% of yDNA in West-Frisia (northern Netherlands) it also accounts for 45% of yDNA in north-western Germany. What separates most English R1b yDNA from that found in Wales and the highlands of Scotland, as well as Ireland, is that about 60% of it is of the type R1b-U106 - the dominant type in Germanic-speaking areas mentioned above, but hardly present at all in the so-called culturally Celtic nations of the Isles. Together with the yDNA types I1a and R1a which Oppenheimer concedes to have arrived in Britain via Germanic migration, we arrive at a paternal line of ancestry in England that is 60-75% Germanic. It would be quite easy to accuse Oppenheimer of trying to promote an agenda, in the process abusing his position as a 'trustworthy' scholar, but let's just suppose he made a mistake.

Gregory

August 21, 2011 at 17:52

I read your comment on The Daily Telegraph, RE David Starky with reference to celtic ancestry. In the chronicle of English history it is written that the first inhabitants of Britain were from Armenia and settled first in the southern part of Britain.
Here is the video link for your info.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHDaPXny3pw&feature=related
There have been a few books written on the Basque and Armenian connection. Unfortunately I do not have the titles to quote. I wonder if you have come acrosss these and also would you be kind enough to shed some light on these theroies. There was a British academic who was obsessed with finding an ancient Armenian Kingdom in Britain (unfortunatley he did not find any). I would be interesed to know your opinion on this matter also.

greg

September 15, 2011 at 02:36

unless the "elite" have the benefit of being disease-ridden with germs, viruses, bugs and bacteria the indigenous populations have no immunity to never having been exposed to the pathogens, then it is very doubtful that an immigrant invading population is able to get an upperhand. the filthy (literally) brits and spaniards had the distinct advantage of infecting their way through the new world...their infectious agents did the bulk of the dirty work for them. this and the ndgns definition of honor worked to create a huge disadvantage that the europeans were quick to exploit....kinda like an invasive species.

catalina

September 15, 2011 at 22:50

Ebon, basque guy, get a life and go out more! 'Unique genetic people' 'direct descendents of homo sapiens'. Jesus! You sound like a bunch of fascists! I'm also unique and I must be a descendent of homo sapiens,unless I'm related to a monkey, which I am of course.
Maybe you are too, importa?

Michael Byrne

September 24, 2011 at 18:04

Makes complete sense to me and fits with all the evidence, we have all genetic similarities, look at red hair and dark hair in ireland, which is mixed suggesting two post ice ages groups migrating to ireland. same in britain. red hair matches that found in parts of scandinavia and germany. But I wouldn't use the term basques thats a more recent ethnic term. England is a Germanic country linguistically and culturally to much extent but this is because of earlier groups not anglo-saxons etc. The Anglo-Saxons were eaily integrated as they spoke a similar language, similar culture. But you have to separate culture and language, England would have had what is termed a celtic culture but a germanic language, in effect it's its own country all of england adopted a germanic language - that's where old english comes from a native language of england. www.proto-english.org is a great site.

Michael Byrne

September 24, 2011 at 18:09

R1b groups are all related, yes different r1b sub groups came to britain but all are related. I1 is native to europe too so is r1a. not everyone in ireland is all the same type of r1b and many in england are r1b that is found in ireland and wales etc, but these are still from hunter gatherers who moved north, none of them knew their r1b grouping and most shared common culture. but r1b types found in england probably have been there as long as r1b types found in ireland have been - all r1b is however related from the same male ancester

basque guy

October 4, 2011 at 08:59

The Basques(direct descendents still) are a colony of the lost tribes of judea thats why they say the "celtic" people and to a lesser extent the english descend from the judeans (watch the video "british dna").The etruscans(pre indo european people just like the basques and the etruscan language also was an agglutinative language just like basque!!) who founded rome also were a colony of the lost tribes of judea but the cheatin and ungrateful romans who learned everything from the etruscans turned against them and the roman catholic church concealed the etruscans identity and the so-called jews(edomites) claim this birthright(lol ridiculous edomites they are frauds too by the way) If you dont believe me here are some facts that will convince you.
The original cromagnon man evolved into the basque man ask any honest scientist.No language in the world is related to basque.The basques are the people with the highest % of rh negative blood in the world and its believed they are the originators of this blood and this blood is known as the blood of the gods or blue blood.The word "original" is of basque origin,pretty tellin right?.The Basques are the original europeans and the oldest european tribe and 1st white tribe around.Experts have claimed the basques are of a holy bloodline so more evidence..hell experts even say the basques are the atlanteans because there is strong evidence for this and the basques were the only seafaring people with rh negative blood.
care to pass it on? guys n gals i need ur help =)
thanx

Irish Man

October 16, 2011 at 20:22

Migrationism is the main method of colonization of an area eg USA. Elite invaders don't tend to bring women with them so limiting breeding potential, they use a "snatch & grap" approach usually accompanied by "shock & horror" tactics but they will leave a work force of native peasants eg in Ireland there are large tracks of land still owned by British lords living in Britian taken in the 1650's & we still have a huge majority of Irish Catholics with most of the Irish culture still intact (except the Irish Language but we have mutated English to suit us), while the North of Ireland has a huge Protestant community originating from migrants that arrived from Scotland in 1600 to work on the land & of course the number of Irish around the world eg in the USA estimates put the Irish community at about 60/70 million & we never had an Empire. Please note I only used Ireland as an example as I know Ireland best. The Basque seem, from the descriptions, as the polynesians of the Atlantic.

Luis González

November 3, 2011 at 00:42

Saying that all these peoples descend from the basques is not correct. They don't descend from basques, rather, they share a common origin with them.
When the ice sheets covered most of Europe, small groups of humans found refuge in in the southern part of the continent. It is believed that Spain and southern France was one of them. There, the endogamic practice of these few humans achieved genetic homogeneity originating the R1B haplogroup, which is commonly considered "celtic". However, this is a mistake. It's origin is prior to any notion of "celtic". It is the main haplogroup found in basques, french, spaniards and britons.
Moreover, there many evidences (archeological as well as historical sources) that confirm a strong celtic presence in Spain: tribe names, comments by classical authors (greeks and romans) and war registries such as the celtiberian wars.
On the other hand, there are no mentions of "celtics" in britain from historical sources. No one ever called britons "celts", and we don't know if they ever considered themselves as such.
There is only a comentary by Julius Caesar, who said that the language in the cost of britain (facing towards the continent) was similar with that of the belgians, but that the inhabitants of the inner parts of the island were natives and different. And we don't even know if the belgians were celts. They were more likely germans of celticized germans.
In sum: I strongly believe in a common origin of all the western europeans, specially on the Atlantic fringe, from Spain to Skandinavia. Those natives received through the centuries many immigrants from other parts of Europe, Asia and even Africa, changing their genetic makeup to some extent, and creating different variations. But the truth is that, if we put together in a room a few individuals coming from all parts of western europe, naked and with their mouth shut, anyone would have a very hard time figuring out who is who...

john

mike

December 3, 2011 at 11:05

The term "Keltic", which is no clear matter given that its usage was less than consistent historically. The term may have been drawn from a Keltic root word attached to several tribes of Continental Europe, in a region known to the Romans as Gaul, which encompassed parts of France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and the Po Valley. However, in the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar refers? to the the Aquitani tribe, for which the Aquitaine region of France is named, as Keltic, yet these were in fact a Basque peoples, whose ethnic and cultural constitution was quite separate from the peoples referred to as Keltic, a point which Caesar himself makes clear
good job julio caesar u moron...

michael

December 4, 2011 at 02:34

firstly i pretty much.agree with the article and that is totally possible a germanic language was spoken in britain, especially as mercian was a distinct dialect quite quickly after the anglo-saxons.supposed to.have arrived, i disagree the people were basques. basque culture is more recent. genetics show the people in the british isles belong to a distinct form of r1b, infact even some i haplogroups are unique to britain.
the languages arent related to the genetics. infact there is.no evidence the people in central europe spoke a celtic language it was probably germanic. infact the germanic speakers in central europe were.the.original celts although a celtic race never existed. people across europe shared celtic culture but spoke different languages and slightly different.mixes of the same genes, only.one of.these tribes called themselves celts, england is a germanic country from a linguistic view, but it shared a common celtic culture but england is actually unique, like everywhere, the basques and irish culturally are different.look at the irish many have dark hair but actually nearly half carry red hair, not like the basques, theres no evidence the r1b in ireland comes directly from the basques, basque identity didnt exist then neither did spanish identity, infact the irish look different. even.the basques contain i haplogroup. all europeans are genetically related, even r1a is related to r1b. each population has. a unique haplogroup mix, but haplogroups are that gene groups, not racial, ethnic groups. they found northern european dna on the female lines amongst the welsh, irish etc hence the fair skin, blue.eyes etc. the english look different to the irish, small populations living in small tribal villages in the past have resulted in particular cultural and genetic characteristics. all haplogroups living in a singular area adopted either.celtic and germanic language and all adopted what is termed celtic culture, old english has been spoken in england a long time, the slight genetic differences in the british isles reflect the settlements after the ice age. red hair has always been near the british isles infact parts of britain were habitable and people lived.close to the ice sheets, theres no evidence england spoke a celtic language, the britons clearly didnt like the other so called celts and why invite germanic speakers to defend them? cheers.

michael

December 4, 2011 at 02:44

not everybody settled in northern spain in the.ice age, some settled in various places including north italy and the alps. people followed.migrating herds north in summer and south im winter hence peoples characteristics today, evem the irish are fair skinned despite dark hair for many. dark haired hairy hunters.met red and blond.haired fair skinned people and had sex. maybe they did this in the continent or britain. whereever it happened you ended up with dark haired fair skinned and red/blond gene carriers many also with body hair. body hair mainly comes from insect prone areas such as swamps, forests.

Ardent Seeker

December 10, 2011 at 07:32

It is a genetic, linguistic, historical, and archaeological fact that before the invasion of Western Europe by the Indo-European speaking Latins, Celts, and Germans, the non-Indo-European speaking Basques were widespread throughout prehistoric Western Europe, living in northern Spain, the Atlantic coastal plains of France right up to the Strait of Dover, and in Britain and Ireland. The invading Indo-Europeans were to subsequently impose their language on the conquered Basques, until the only Basque speakers were confined to an area of northern Spain in the Pyrenees where they live to this day. The Indo-Europeans originally lived as pastoralists in the steppes and prairies north of the Black and Caspian Seas in present day Ukraine and southern Russia, and they campaigned on horseback as mounted archers.
The reason why the Latin vernacular survived in the Gaulish-French language, although it had formally belonged to the Celtic language family before the Roman conquest, despite the invasions by such Germanic groups as the Franks, Burgundians, Visigoths, and Ostrogoths in the 400's A.D., was because it was connected to Italy by land, and therefore had attracted many Italian-Roman settlers, especially in the south of France. Roman Britain, on the other hand, was a far flung province of the Roman Empire, separated from Roman Gaul/France by water, and therefore had attracted fewer Roman settlers. This explains why the Celtic language survived for so long in Wales and Cornwall. The reason why the Celtic language survived in Armorica/Brittany in Gaul/France was because it has thin, rocky soils, and was therefore economically neglected by the Romans. The Gaulish Celts of Armorica were reinforced by British Celtic settlers in the 400's and 500's A.D. When the Germanic Anglo-Saxons invaded Roman Britain in the 400's and 500's A.D., most of the Celtic British peasnts spoke Celtic rather than a Latin vernacular. The Germanic invaders of Roman France were prepared to learn the Latin French vernacular, associated with the grandeur of the Roman Empire, but the Germanic invaders of Britain probably looked down upon the British Celtic language as a peasant language. The mountainous Balkans was another area economically neglected by the Romans, with the exception of Roman Dacia/Romania, where the Romans found valuable gold mines, and where a Latin vernacular survives to this day.
The fall of the West Roman Empire can be partly attributed to the recurrent dynastic civil warfare which plagued it in the years from 383-388, 392-394, 407-411, 423-425, 432, 454-457, and 468-472 A.D., which weakened its ability to present a united military front against Germanic invaders, who themselves were fleeing the Mongolian speaking Huns. The Huns, with their powerful recurve bow, proved to be quite effective cavalry archers, although they too used swords and lances in battle.

Per

December 11, 2011 at 22:27

Where does the red hair from as many Irish have? Has the Irish potentially strong features from Neanderthals? Neanderthals had genes for red hair and no other people in the world have red hair than the Scots, Irish and people of Eastern Europe.

basque guy

December 12, 2011 at 10:00

"And these "Sun-worshipping" Hitto-Phoenician Catti? Barats or Early "Brit-ons," (Basque people)whose long-lost history and origin are now recovered for us in great part in these pages by my new keys, are disclosed by a mass of?? incontestable attested facts? and confirmatory evidence to be a leading branch of the originators? and propagators of the World's Civilization and of the Higher Religion of the? One God"- David Icke.The original europeans n the holy people that gave rise to white people
justice n pass it on

Sam Haskell

archer

January 5, 2012 at 14:37

Well, people may argue back and forth about where R1b came from and when,and how much Saxon ancestry is or isn'tr in England, but the indisputable archaeological facts are that after the hunter-gatherers (who have left too little material remains to really make comment on possible origin)though a western seaboard route makes the most sense geographically) the neolithic people who build the megaliths were a slight,gracile people with long 'Meditteranean' type skulls, whose culture stetched the length of the western Atlantic seaboard right up to the tip of Norway, with its main centres in Iberia, Brittany and the British Isles. They had a thriving culture, augmented by later continental arrival, the Beaker people, who were taller and inclined to brachycephaly (round heads) who mostly crossed from the Low countries/Germany but also may have early Iberian origins. There is NO evidence of huge movements of people into Britain/Ireland in the Iron age (what there were was mostly from France to England) so presumably the peoples the Romans found were descendants of hunters,farmers, and Beaker migrants. There were several million people living in England at the time of the Saxon incursions--the idea they could annihilate so many is ludicrous,esp. given there is no physical evidence. Celtic languages did survive in several western areas of England (outside of Cornwall) till the Normans.

Bob M

January 5, 2012 at 17:25

In the introduction we are told:
*Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.”
Is this true? I see that Wikipedia seems to be able to find apparently knowledgeable people to write on both topics. I wouldn't doubt that there will be some debate about the scope of the terms but "no agreement ... on the meaning of the words" looks like overstatement to me.

michael

January 9, 2012 at 19:09

for me the british are not basques, there is no evidence people came iberia, what about southern france, alps etc, basque identity didnt exist they were hunter gatherers. even genetically the british have unique sub clades of r1b and i haplogroups. there is no evidence the english saw themselves as germanic, despite speaking a germanic language and sharing culture with their neighbours. the ancient brits were hunter gatherers, with their own tribal identity. the genes are just related, modern celtic identity is modern from the 1800s and celtic nationalism, the vikings were a band of various groups without a singular ethnic identity. they followed leaders rather than race and they contained various haplogroups.

michael

January 9, 2012 at 19:28

totally agree with the rest of the article, vikings were not one people but various war bands who genetically contained r1b, r1a and i haplogroups anyway although these groups.reached britain way before the vikings, the celts have never been a race

basque guy

January 18, 2012 at 18:22

Basque villages were devastated by bombs,Franco's bombers pursued the? ships, but they arrived to england? safely.Basque children who were orphaned were adopted? by the British people.God? gathers the various remnants of His chosen race in His own way? and in His own good time.We leave our Basque brothers in the Pyrenees til? the day when? "Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the peoples;all? who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the? seed the? Lord has blessed" http://www.ensignmessage.com/basques.html

Frankster

January 22, 2012 at 21:15

The genetic makeup of Britain and Ireland is overwhelmingly what it has been since the Neolithic period and to a very considerable extent since the Mesolithic period, especially in the female line, i.e. those people, who in time would become identified as British Celts (culturally speaking), but who (genetically speaking) should more properly be called Cro-Magnon[citation needed]. In continental Europe, this same Cro-Magnon genetic legacy gave rise to the Basques. But both "Basque" and "Celt" are cultural designations not genetic ones and therefore to call a Celt "Basque" or a Basque "Celtic", is a fallacy.
Read 'Blood of the Isles' by Bryan Sykes (former Professor of Genetics at Oxford University)

basque guy

February 11, 2012 at 11:08

"Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles (Nations), and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they [are) the seed [whom) the Lord hath blessed."
http://www.ensignmessage.com/basques.html
hes speakin about the basques

basque guy

basque guy

February 11, 2012 at 11:11

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/shepherd-kings-the-restoring-of-spains-ancient-history-on-the-basques/17526865
Shepherd Kings is the history book which ties together and corroborates the ancient histories of ancient Egypt, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Irish in the light of modern DNA discoveries and other scientific studies showing the Basques along with the Spartans and Trojans to be an ancient branch of the tribe of Judah

basque guy

basque guy

Iconoclast

February 12, 2012 at 02:37

Mr. Oppenheimer needs to look at his own source material more carefully. He admits that the people of the Celtic countries have very similar DNA, yet makes a big deal of the fact that this same DNA is found (in abundance) in Spain.
Also, he is trying to assert that the english language existed at the time of the Roman empire. WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE? The roman historians said that the languages of Gaul and Britain differed very little. This is consistent with the idea of the original Britons being CELTS who spoke a CELTIC tongue.
If he spent less time reading crackpot theories, and more time studying the ancient writings, he would know that THE IRISH HAVE ALWAYS KNOWN THEY CAME FROM SPAIN. Mr Oppenheimer should have read the Lebor Gabala Erenn, where Irish history pretty much begins, and he could have saved himself all that DNA testing!
Here is the truth, based on years of my own independent research:
THE RACE REFERRED TO AS \THE CELTS\ REPRESENTS THE ORIGINAL EUROPEANS. THEY DO NOT REPRESENT SOME CULTURE THAT MIGRATED FROM INDIA OR JUDEA OR WHEREVER. THIS IS WHY THE BASQUES AND CELTS SHARE COMMON DNA...BECAUSE THEY TOO ARE OF THIS SAME ORIGINAL EUROPEAN RACE!
I'm not talking about some nazi aryan-race theory, nor am I talking about its thinly-disguised grandson, the \Indo-European\ theory.
Also, does this author know ANYTHING about the Celtic roots of Spain, which are well-documented and well-known?
The indigenous legends of the CELTIC countries tell us that the stone megaliths were not built by some imaginary pre-celtic race...they were built by the Celtic peoples as monuments to commemorate important events. Legendry is FULL of stories that tell how these megaliths were built.
He is right, though, to assert that the Hallstatt culture was probably not related to the modern-day inhabitants of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, Man, Cornwall, and Galicia. And also correct to assert that the continental Celts, better known as Gauls, are not directly related to the modern nations that identify themselves as Celtic.
JUST BECAUSE THE WORD \CELT\ WAS NOT IN COMMON USE UNTIL A COUPLE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, RACIST HISTORIANS ARE SEEKING TO TELL AN ENTIRE CULTURE THAT THEIR HERITAGE IS FAKE. The word \Celt\ as we know it today, was not in use in ancient times, this is true. HOWEVER, there is a good reason for this. It is because we are talking about a people who were too fiercely independent to ever have been totally unified. Yet, at a later time, when people from the Celtic countries began examining their culture, and examining other cultures, they realized that they shared a huge number of similarities with certain other cultures. They needed a word to denote this obviously related group of subcultures, so they adopted an old Greek term. So, why do roman-biased historians continue to assert that this connection between seven nations is not real, just because it wasn't fully realized until a few hundred years ago?
Oh yeah, and people only use the word \Celt\ as a term to denote the shared culture of the Celtic countries, as opposed to its numerous subcultures, which have names of their own. The Celtic identity that you are attacking does not exist, but there is a real Celtic identity and clearly Oppenheimer knows nothing about it.
SO HERE IS THE MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION, MR OPPENHEIMER: If the seven nations are NOT inherently related, Why do all these cultures play similar music, speak similar languages, have similar folklore/mythology, practice very similar customs, have similar folk dress, AND (according to your own words) A COMMON GENETIC HERITAGE.
I am Celtic and proud, and so are millions of others. Disprove that, you racist pig.

30% of class time in primary schools on religion and Irish - can this be justified? - Page 36

April 6, 2012 at 16:17

[...] Celts have little to do with the Irish The Celts left a limited genetic imprint on the ''Irish'' genome, to claim otherwise is in opposition to the evidence I'm afraid; this whole ''Ireland is a Celtic [...]

MArk

April 16, 2012 at 12:19

From caer feddwyd emssage board :
Language (or culture!) and genetics, however, have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
As soon as he moves away from genetics, Oppenheimer's theories are, frankly, bollocks. The evidence suggests that the genetic makeup of the British Isles has not changed significantly since the Neolithic, which is all fine and dandy. However, genetic continuity does not indicate cultural and linguistic continuity: in fact, all the evidence points in the opposite direction.
Oppenheimer seems to be under the impression that populations do not change their languages, rather language replacement only stems from population replacement. Evidence for language shift without wholesale population replacement is abundant throughout the world, an particularly in the British Isles: the Cornish, for example, did not stop speaking Cornish and start speaking English because they were slaughtered or driven off by Anglophone immigrants.
He also seems to be under the impression that a lack of Celtic place-names in eastern England is an indication that there have been no Celtic speakers there. While few modern placenames in eastern England derive from Celtic, we have plenty of evidence for pre-Saxon Celtic placenames in the area: Camulodunum, Dubris, Noviomagus, Verulamium etc are all Celtic names, not Germanic. If during the Roman occupation of Britain this area was speaking some early form of English, why don't we have records of Germanic place names here?
Overall, he doesn't seem to have the first clue about historical linguistics. Which is fair enough, he's a geneticist. I know sod all about genetics. On the other hand, I don't concoct wild theories about genetics and foist them on the unsuspecting public in paperback form. Were I to come up with such a theory, I'd make damn sure I read the relevant literature on the subject before publishing: something Oppenheimer clearly hasn't done. For example, claiming that speakers of a Celtic language arrived in the British Isles around 9000 BC is ludicrous, and indicates that he hasn't bothered to read the literature. Proto-Celtic's own parent language, Proto-Indo-European, probably wasn't even spoken at that time.
(Furthermore, if I may comment on the quote from the article on romanarmy.net: "Dr. Oppenheimer agrees with Dr. Forster's argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary". There's nice, two geneticists agree on something they know nothing about. Glottochronology dates from the 50s, and was abandoned by linguists only shortly afterwards. Because it does not work. It's not a matter of being "too cautious", it's abandoning a tool that doesn't work. Would you try to fix a computer with the remote from your telly? No, because it wouldn't work, no matter how much two carpenters tell you that you're being "too cautious".)
In summary: it's bollocks.

Ed. Selleslagh

May 18, 2012 at 22:39

Just a few remarks:
1. When talking about Celts, one has to distinguish between Goidelic (Q-Celtic)(Irish, Scottish,) and Brythonic (P-Celtic)(Welsh, Cornish, Breton). It is likely that the Belgae were Brythonic, as it is plausible that their tribe's name is related to Welsh 'balch' ('proud', maybe 'brave' in much earlier Welsh); which would explain why J. Caesar tells us they were 'horum omnium fortissimi', the bravest of all these, i.e. the Celtae/Galli, the Aquitani and the Belgae - a misinterpretation maybe of the interpreter's words. Even so, it is equally likely that some eastern Belgic tribes were either Celticized Germanics or vice versa.
If the Belgae were Brythonic, it would also explain why at the time the language on both sides of the Channel, north of the Seine mouth, was very similar.
2. J. Caesar tells us that the Galli (in Latin) called themselves 'Celtae'. He doesn't apply this to the Belgae (nor the Aquitani, who were demonstrably Basque, through inscriptions). So the term Celts could not be used for all we call Celts nowadays: only for the Q-Celts, the Goidelics.
3. Welsh has a few quirks, like some egativity (i.e. an absence of direct object and resorting to what amounts more or less to a passive mode) in certain cases. The only ergative language in Europe is Basque, so that looks like a substrate effect..
4. During the last Ice Age northern populations were pushed southward and ended up along a line that can be described very roughly as 'Paris to Vladivostok'. Archeology shows there was great mobility of cultures along that ice cap rim, and most of the languages (Finnic, Ugric, Uralic in general, Altaic/Turkic languages, en possibly Mongolic lgs., Siberian ones etc., and the emigrant relatives in the Americas) are related or at the very least members of an ancient language association ('Sprachbund'). After the Ice Age many of these hunters followed the receding ice cap rim northhwards, because of the animals living there. Evidence is mounting that not all these populations moved northward, but that large pockets remained in southern locations, giving rise to Etruscan (now shown to be related to the ancient Proto-Hungarian, and originally from the Egean Islands), Basque (which contains a few but significant traces of Altaic and Uralic), Caucasian and Sumerian. Remarkably, also (Proto-)Indo-European seems to be a rather peculiar member of this group, at least in its oldest form. Within IE, Itaiic, Celtic and Germanic seem to stem from one the same IE branch, but heavily influenced by older languages acting as substrates. It is remarkable that such diverse languages like German, Finnish, Turkish and Basque share the same ancient genitive ending -en. It is quite obvious that IE was originally agglutinative like Uralic, Altaic and Basque still are. Also the original division into animate and inanimate 'gender', (like still in Basqe) instead of masculine/feminine/neuter is a common characteristic (feminine was 'invented' later to differentiate the animate genders, while the neuter was the original 'object' form, for inanimate 'gender'; that's why the masc. accusative and the neuter nominative are the same, as are the neuter nominative and accusative : this is due to the original idea that dead things 'can't do' anything, i.e. cannot be the subject. My conclusion: western IE is built on top of an older layer of languages related to Uralic, Basque (vasconic ancestor) and possibly Altaic (via Uralic).. I think the pre-IE frontier between vasconic and uralic must have been somewhere at the latitude of the Belgian-Dutch border or the Thames mouth.
5. Brythonic and Basque: both have the same labializing tendencies (In IE this means that the original KW (QU) sound becomes W or P or B (like in Welsh, Classic and later Greek, and P-Italic like Oscan-Umbrian. Goidelic (Gaelic), Latin, Germanic, Mycenean Greek are Q-languages that preserve the QU or make it into HW, (later V/F) or K.
6. English has a few words that don't have a satisfactory etymology in IE, like 'kill' and 'ill'. But in Basque that would be obvious: the semantic field of 'hil' and 'il(un)' covers 'darkness', 'death' etc.
7. Germanic has tens of % of words that don't seem to be of IE origin.
8. The problem of the Picti (painted ones in Latin, Prytyn (i.e. Britons) in Brythonic, Cruithni in Goidelic): In later centuries it was thought they were Celtic, but it is more likely they were aboriginals of non-IE origin, maybe Basques or Uralics. They were certainly celticized at some stage, whence the idea.
BTW, I am not confounding genetics and language, but there is a pretty high degree of statistical correleation between tribal groups (which may be genetically diverse) and language under favorable circumstances, like isolation caused by sparse population in large territories. When regions become more populated, cultures start to merge, overrun each other but always leave substrate traces and the like.
My viewpoint on Basque: A mixed language of ancient Pyrenean (language of the Basque glacial refugium) and Iberian, imported from the eastern Mediterranean via the islands. The Iberians brought a much higher dominant culture to Iberia that probably started of as an elite culture and language. This same Iberian elite switched entirely to Latin in less than 100 years. Iberian and Basque share many characteristcs and even grammatical particles etc., but do not seem to be more than extremely remotely related in spite of appearances. I call them unrelated sisters.

Joe Soap

May 28, 2012 at 14:15

Hilarious and depressing reading to some of the comments here, especially from those who can’t tell a Jew from an Englishman. Forget ‘Britain’. This is another thinly veiled attack on English identity from a corrupt Leftist establishment.
‘Bill Clogston’, who wears his indifference like a badge of honour, typifies those in the modern world who parade ignorance as socially progressive. Churchill? He wrote as a unionist. What do you expect him to say? Furthermore we absorbed Latin through religious scholarship much later, not by dint of the Roman Legions here 400 years before us. Saxons invited by Vortigern to help with troublesome Picts stayed, what is more, because their employers turned out to be unreliable tossers and as such easy prey, not because they ‘liked the women’.
You’d know that if you knew what you were talking about at all. When a London University study of 2006 revealed an unexpectedly widespread genetic influence from Germany even in the west of England [traditionally lied about as ‘celtic’] researchers cited a system of apartheid as the only plausible explanation for a pronounced absence of the very inter-breeding you ‘think’ is true.
Stakes are high and the ambitions of an internationalist political elite remain unsatisfied. Remember too that universities are gatekeepers. Bastions of impartial intellectual endeavour they are not, as many who strive to live up to the ideological demands of honesty and impartiality find to their cost. That 2006 study? I happen to know that one of its authors left the field of Anglo Saxon genetics in disgust after coming under pressure from publishers and academic authorities to alter his findings.
People believe what they want to believe in the end. Real English people know who they are. Unlike the ‘Cornish’ and all the other ‘celts’, the scent of direct subsidies from Brussels a sudden reminder of their ‘historical independence’, they have no need to lie or connive at leaving what rats think of as a sinking ship [it can be hard finding a taxpayer to live off when you need one, but a taxpayer’s just a taxpayer wherever he's from in the world, especially when you just need someone to pick up the tab for all those ‘fiercely independent’ poses you like to assume for tourists. I wonder who pays for ‘Catalonia isn’t Spain’ if not the taxpayers of Madrid?]
Scotchmen appear to be descendants of rather stupid Spanish fisherman. Today’s Irish were pirates [some say still are] who fetched up around 2nd Century AD, laying siege to the north east corner of that island and the native Uliti people [it’s where we get the word ‘Ulster’]. Brythonics or ‘Britons’ are Welchers. Welchers gave us a useful word for dishonesty but not much besides. They were handed a new home and left to get on with it, other remnants being forced into Northern France ['Brittany'?].
These are the salient facts. Accept them and get on with your lives. As renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma points out: ‘There is no culture in this world that is not the result of successful and sustained invention.’ Your real enemies are money men and writers who agitate on their behalf, who would strip you even of that harmless indulgence.

Linda Dale Burns

June 16, 2012 at 03:19

I contributed to this discussion years ago. Britain is a melting pot just as America is. We are who we are. My grandmother in her later years looked very "English", white hair, rosey cheeks, thick Geordie accent. When she was young she had very dark hair. My mother and her sister were very dark haired with green eyes and would tan very darkly, looking more Mediterranean which with DNA testing by the Genographic Project by National Geographic proved. We are J2b1a1. My grandmother's line included McKenzie, Carmichael, Fail, Johnson, Thompson and many others going back as far as I can to the 1600's. They all were from Northumberland and the Borders area. My grandparents were British through and through till their dying day here in America. I dare say most people would be very surprised to find out who they really are through DNA testing. We suspected but were still surprised by the results. Prejudice against any race, ethnicity, so called "class" of people is really ridiculous. Before anyone thinks they are better than any other person or race they better find out "who they really are"!!!!

Igor

June 17, 2012 at 18:31

In the old days (before modern medicine), Basque women had to choose basque men or they were going to have only one children, I live in a small village (<400) and everyone I know has Rh-, so that can explain why is less permeable culturally and genetically. The difficult part is to explain how it started, somehow there was a group with Rh- big enougth to survive all the time and not necesarilly in the same place, but taking in account how easilly can disappear a civilization I can guess there was a time it was a really big group, a lot bigger than now otherwise we have had disappeared

Ed. Selleslagh

June 18, 2012 at 17:18

Actually, even the first child is at risk if the father is RH positive and the child inherits this trait, but the danger worsens with each pregnancy. Whence the former belief in certain parts of the Basque country that 'a child from a stranger (non-Basque) is a child of the devil'. That is a clear indication of how they thought about marrying non-Basques. Another symptom of this attitude is that the Basques had a matrilinear inheritance system, so 'intruding' non-Basque husbands could not inherit Basque property.
Indeed, there must have been many more Rh- people because safe natural reproduction can only occur if both parents are Rh-, preferably O/Rh-. Intermarriage with other people would inevitably led to reduction of Rh- baby numbers.
BTW, RH negative is not a feature, but rather the absence of a feature: the lack of an antibody (even though it can arise following sensitizing events). Something similar can be said about bloodgroup O. Many think O/Rh- is the oldest bloodgroup of mankind because the antigens that characterize other bloodgroups seem to have arisen from later mutations. O/Rh- people can give blood to everybody else.

Alejandro

July 4, 2012 at 00:52

As a spaniard having lived in the UK, I have to admit there are some people who could pass as Spanish. As being from Basque region, there are usually whiter looking people there than the south, but apart from those few english (or british), who look like spanish, I think the rest of the english population are definitely more german looking to me than spanish. Having recently visited germany (Frankfurt, then stayed in Berlin for a bit) I think the english and germans might be a lot closer than they realise or care to admit. Perhaps I find it easier to see such differences as an outsider of england, but even here in spain we relate the english to germans, dutch etc than french, spanish etc. Also worth mentioning that from my trip to germany, having arrived in southern germany, i saw many men and women who resembled basques, certainly more than english as a whole. both great countries though! saludes desde mi pais!

Iam Yue

July 6, 2012 at 09:40

If there are any doubters out there I would suggest that you have your
mitochondrial DNA tested by a company such as Oxford Ancestors.
Hailing from a classic Irish background, I found that my dna belonged to
Halpogroup K; "Haplogroup K appears in West Eurasia, North Africa, and South Asia and in populations with such an ancestry. Overall mtDNA Haplogroup K is found in about 6% of the population of Europe and the Near East, but it is more common in certain of these populations. Approximately 16% of the Druze of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan, belong to haplogroup K. It was also found in a significant group of Palestinian Arabs.[5] K reaches a level of 17% in Kurdistan. Approximately 32% of people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry are in haplogroup K."
That destroyed a number of ancestral myths I can tell you!

Scratchy7929

July 31, 2012 at 18:32

What I find the most misleading part in this article is by calling the Belgae Germanic.Wouldn't it be more accurate to call the Belgae Nordic rather than Germanic.From the small amount of research I've done there seems to as much as a split between Nordic & the South Western Germanic tribes (west of the Rhine) than there is between the 'so called' Atlantic Celts (who did actually travel as far as the Southern Coasts of Norway to begin with anyway).As far as I can work out there is no case for there being a Germanic gene.
The Danish definately have a predominantly Norse gene pool, although the East Germans have a predominantly Slavic gene pool.The German population in the south west have a general Western European gene pool (although even they have other genetic mixes).The south eastern Germans have a very much more mixed gene pool again - Slavic, various Asian & other mid european plain gene pools that are hard to pin down.
Really haven't got a clue why the Belgae could be considered Germanic (genetically) really.The word Germania basically means border people.Basically the dividing line between the Western European population (most of which gene pool came from the Atlantic Celt) & the Slavic / Barbarian population's to the east.
The Belgae were probably Atlantic Celtic to begin with but have been highly Nordicised in the last 3k years.It must be remembered that Belgium is very much split to this day even with the Walloons (now French speaking - probably more Atlantic Celtic) & the Flemish (probably having a more Nordic gene pool).Will leave it to others to decide how Nordicised the Belgae were who came over & inhabited Southern England (below the Midlands) as this was at a time when there was a big change of the make-up of the gene pool who lived in the Belgae area as far as I can make out.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

August 1, 2012 at 16:17

The Flemish are mostly the direct descendants of the 5th. century Frankish invaders, Salic ones inthe center and Ripuarian ones in the east. In West-Flanders there is an older stratum of coastal Ingwaeonic Germanics (related to the Frisians and coastal English). At the arrival of the Franks Flanders was very sparsely populated (marshes in the west, heath in the east), so they became the majority; in the south (Wallonia) the already heavily romanized original Celts (Belgae) remained the majority, which gave rise to the present language border (which has shifted a little to the north since then). Note that the largely French speaking island of Brussels in Flanders is a recent phenomenon that started in the 18th. c. under the influence of the elites under the Habsburg regime.
As to the Belgae Caesar speaks about, they were undoubtedly Celts (in the present meaning of the word, not Caesar's), but as he says, clearly distinct from the Gaulish people (Galli, Celtae). The claim that they were Germanic has to do with the shift in meaning: the Romans called 'germanic' all peoples east of the Rhine. It is very plausible that some of them were also Celtic and related to the tribes west of the Rhine. Which kind of Celts were the Belgae? In my opinion, they were most likely Brythonic (like the Welsh, Bretons, Cornish): the etymology of their name seems to point to 'balch' ('proud' in modern Welsh, maybe a shift from an earlier meaning of 'brave' or the like). That would explain Caesar's words that they were 'horum omnium fortissimi', 'the brvest/fiercest of all these'. Just a little misunderstanding...
In Wallonia there are lots of Brythonic toponyms (e.g. Marbehan, Bohan...) and hydronyms (e.g. Amel/Amblève, from Aber), in Flanders rather few, but those are pretty significant: the region arounfd Veurne (Fr. Furnes, West-Flanders) e.g., is called 'Veurne-Ambacht'. The word Ambacht is purely Celtic, and derived from 'ambatus' (as mentioned by Caesar), the head of such a region. 'Ambacht' also occurs in the SW Netherlands. Cf. 'riocht' = kingdom, realm of the Ri (King). One of the tribes living in the marshlands behind the dune belt of Flanders were the Morini, a pretty transparent name derived from 'mor', 'sea' in Celtic.
In summary: I believe the Belgae (Balchai??) were a Brythonic (P-) Celtic people. The Germanic element in Belgium (and most of the Netherlands, except Frisia) stems from the 5th c. Franks.
The Gaulish language record is very confusing, so much that some categorize the language as P-Celtic (Brythonic), others as Q-Celtic (Goidelic). It is possible that they didn't form a unitary people, and that there was dialect gradient from purely Q-Celtic (like the original Celts in Iberia) to more P-influenced dialects in the north. That would nicely explain the conflicting evidence.

Scratchy7929

August 1, 2012 at 23:37

Thanks for your expanding of my above post Eduard.Still don't understand why the Ingvaeonic tribal peoples could be considered Germanic - surely they have gene pools more connected to Nordic's.Surely a seperation should be made between Nordic gene pools (confusingly termed North Germanic) & the rather more mixed gene pools found in present day Germany.It causes utter confusion as far as genetic studies are concerned to the less informed.
The cultural / linguistic influence the Nordic peoples had over the people that now live in Germany are a different matter of discussion, although did have a small influence on changes in 'what is now' German genetic mix.
Genetically speaking there are large differences between the so called Germanic peoples (a linguistic grouping more than anything) - North Germanic (surely Nordic is much more understandable), North Sea Germanic, or Ingvaeonic (mixture of Atlantic Celt & Nordic gene pools), Weser-Rhine Germanic, or Istvaeonic (mixture of (North) Western European gene pool (R1b...) & more Slavic to the east(R1a...)), Elbe Germanic, or Irminonic (a very much more mixed gene pool - North coast mostly Slavic / East German), East Germanic confusingly covers most of present day Poland & has a prodominantly Western- Slavic gene pool)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_tribes#Classification

J. Reedman

August 15, 2012 at 21:29

There has been some question as to the actual age of Y-dna R1b; it may not be as old as once was thought in western Europe (not post Ice age after all.) However, it has just been discovered in males of the Beaker Culture of the late neolithic. Every where where R1b is high, the beakers seem to have been. Their origins may be in Portugal.
re: RH- neg blood. The Irish also have a high %--more evidence of links to ancient Iberia?
Actually I don't know why so many are shocked by this; archaeologists have known for years that the western seaboard was the great route for migration and trade in prehistory. The Irish monument of Newgrange has Iberian smiliarities, a Portuguese bronze age earring has also been found in Ireland. A third of skeletons in a bronze age cemetery in southeastern England appear to have been recent migrants from Iberia by the isotopes in their teeth. Perhaps its just the huge survival of these genes that surprises, despite later 'invasions.' However, it's actually quite logical if you think about it!
The further west you go in Britain the more you see people with darker phenotypes as well. I'm in the southwest and brown and hazel eyes far outstrips blue among people I work with. Many Welsh, Irish and Cornish people are very dark, even black haired (like my grandmother who was Irish--she also had olive skin and brown eyes.) The east of England and parts of the north and lowland Scotland-MUCH fairer. Most of Ireland is dark haired (43% dark brown and 3% black)
But even amongst the more eastern English i can usually always tell them apart from German who tend to be slightly taller and heavier set, with rounder heads and faes and larger jaws, as well as lighter hair (except in southern Germany where nearly 40% of men have a celtic maker...though NOT the same 'celtic 'as Britain /Ireland, which is Atlantic,,,but rather that more 'Hallstatt' central type.)

Vahan Setyan

August 20, 2012 at 16:33

I believe we are forgetting or not cognizant of the fact that Basque language is an Armenian derivative, including the language, which has the closest link to the Armenian language. Thus, the key in understanding this link is through the Armenian language. You still have regions and names in Basque that are only Armenian in nature.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

August 21, 2012 at 11:35

Basque is NOT an Armenian derivative: Armenian is an Indo-European language with an earlier substrate that might be related to a common or related ancestor of Basque, most likely one of the subarctic languages of the last Ice Age. So, I think you're turning things upside down. Armenian is related to a very early form of Greek and has both characteristics of satem- and kentum-languages, a fact that is very likely the result of influence by neighboring languages (Indo-Iranian).
Basque is anything BUT Indo-European (ergative, agglutinative etc...) ; if related with any language groups, which is still to be demonstrated, it would be with Uralic and Altaic, an just maybe, with some very ancient ancestor of some Caucasian languages; Iberian comes to mind as an immigrant language in Spain, originally from the eastern Mediterranean or the Caucasian-Pontic area. Evidence is slowly growing that Basque might be a pidgin, a mixed language, of Pyrenean (from the Refugium) and Iberian. Basque has some Altaic cognates, and Iberian some Finno-Ugric ones.

Greg

September 6, 2012 at 10:43

He was using the word`England` to define a particular geographic area of Britain, which you might have grasped had you not allowed nationalism and anglophobia to cloud your judgement. Strange how some who regard themselves as `Celts` get so hot under the collar when cherished myths are subjected to question and scrutiny.

Kevin Beach

September 8, 2012 at 14:59

How many people were left in Britannia when the Roman legions and cohorts left in the fifth century? I've read an estimate of four million.
Many of them led recognisably Roman lives, which they were no tin a hurry to relinquish. There was a Romanised aristocracy, which expected to be defended against marauders, both internal and external.
They had to form their own armies to replace the Roman armies. Who were best to do pick for the job of training them? Perhaps it was the established warriors of north-western Europe that the Britons turned to: Jutes, Angles and Saxons maybe.
How many people were there in the areas occupied by those peoples? I have read that the figures may have been less than one million.
What percentage of any population could be put under arms, let alone be persuaded to emigrate (in effect) overseas? Has it ever be more than ten percent, anywhere, at any time? And what proportion of those would consent to leave there own people? A fraction, I suggest.
So let us assume that some thousands of Germanic warriors arrived in Britannia to help train the aristocracy's armies. What chance would they have had of conquering four million people, many of whom were already under arms?
The figures simply don't support the theory of Angle/Saxon/Jute invasions that defeated British natives and supplanted a Celtic language with Germanic tongues. It is more likely that there was already a Germanic language in the Eastern half of Britannia, similar to and perhaps mutually intelligible with the languages of the post-Roman Germanic immigrants.
And by the way, the term "Germanic", when used in linguistics, refers to a group of languages that includes all the Nordic languages and Icelandic, as well as those from further south in Europe.

John

September 11, 2012 at 21:07

The problem with trying to get this type of interesting article over
to the modern day welsh is that they are taught complete and
utter rubbish (mostly without any evidence) in their schools.
They would not even read past the first couple of paragraphs
as it flys in the face of what they have been mis-taught in their early life
at school.
Us pure English on the other hand are far more open minded
and welcome such a new and inforamative article,

Gee

June 26, 2015 at 15:02

Hey John
What's your beef with the Welsh? Very little is taught about Welsh culture and traditions in schools now. This began because the English Coal masters and Iron masters punished people for speaking Welsh. They didn't know if they were plotting against them. The language all but died out in Eastern Wales. You haven't mentioned the Irish and the Scottish. Why not? Funnily enough Welsh was used in messages sent during the war because they knew other enemy soldiers wouldn't understand the language. This never seems to be mentioned when people talk about the war. I am proud to be Welsh and am not an anti English person as many of my friends are from England and family have gone to live there. Why do you wish to perpetuate bad feeling between the two countries?

K. balch

September 18, 2012 at 14:00

In regards to genetics, and especially Y, why are the genetic contributions of Roman legionnaires never mentioned? Are we to suppose that none of these males, in Britain and Europe for hundreds of years, contributed to the gene pool? It is important to realize that "Roman" legions were not "Italian" or "mediterannean" legions, genetically speaking. I recall reading that very young boys were taken (as one form of taxation) from all areas of Roman occupation to be trained as soldiers for the Roman legions, which would seem to indicate that a legion was not necessarily a genetically homogenous group in itself. Also there were many Roman soldiers from many genetic backgrounds over many years in Brittain (and Europe.) Even so, historians and geneticists, when speaking of the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Britain, ignore these genetic contributions as if when the troops left they took all the progeny of 400 years with them.
Yes, I do note the term "Romano-British" but I never see any reference to the fact that there must be much legionnaire (meaning " from most anywhere in the Roman world") YDNA in Britain before the main Anglo
Saxon invasion of it. Almost as if, when Rome chose to leave Britain, all "roman" DNA left too.

Ben

Gary

October 3, 2012 at 01:43

British people are a mix of European people, NO ONE here is a pure Basque, Roman, Saxon, Jute, Viking or Norman. We are a mix of most of these.
The only slight difference is your haplogroup, if your a male then R1b is the dominant one in Britain, followed by I1a and R1a.
There is differences though in parts of Britain - more western areas like Ireland, Scotland are 80-90% R1b, whereas the further east you go (especially Eastern England) then you will find more men who are I1a and R1a.
I1a is a funny haplogroup as it doesn't determine for sure where your paternal grandfather came from, he could of either been a Anglo Saxon, Jute, Viking or Norman. The same could be said for R1a men aswell.
Whereas R1b is most likely from Basque Spain.
Sometimes you can guess a males haplogroup by the way they look. I've had quite a bit of luck from doing it, I haven't been right all of the time but quite often I have been right.
Don't forget if you are a member of a Y-Haplogroup you decend from one man who you will get at least some features passed down to you that was there thousands of years ago.
I've found most I1a men to be tall with rounder faces and more visible higher cheekbones also generally slimmer.
R1b men are generally a bit shorter in height and stockier in build.
R1a men tend to be slim but can be very tall, sometimes way over 6ft.

redmanrt

October 6, 2012 at 18:19

Of course the Anglo-Saxons landing in England encountered a general population already speaking a Germanic language. The Belgae (a Germanic tribe) were already present in Britain when Julius Ceasar arrived, and his continental jumping off point Portus Iitius > Gesoriacum > Bononia Germanorum > Boulogne was in the territory of the continental Belgae who were some pretty rough customers.
Thus over centuries the Romans gradually marginalized the celtic language speaking people of Brittain with a lot of help from the descendents of the Belgae.
I can just see the recruiting posters on the walls of Portus Itius in the year 43 AD - Oom Claudi heeft je nodig (Uncle Claudius needs YOU).

Alyson

December 10, 2012 at 19:24

Wow! What a lot of comments - Belgians, Basques and bagpipes in Iran??
Indeed folks travelled the globe in the distant past, and from the shores of Wales, with its 'oldest language in Europe' the mix of Hindi words and Roman concepts seems to be thrown into a basically Celtic language related to the Gallic and Gaelic of Scotland and Ireland. However this much misunderstood concept called Celt seems to me to be the Gallic, Gaulish, Galician and Moroccan mountain Berber seaboard identity which sea-farers from Morocco to Iceland travelled. The languages are related. Old Irish as was on the old punt or pound note was remarkably similar to old Icelandic. The bagpipes of Galicia join with the central European Vizigoth traditions of music and dance, and Idris is found in Wales and Morocco as a mountain and a name.
The small dark people were seemingly the first settlers of Britain but the Celtic languages are evidenced in Welsh names like Cymru and Cumbria. Waves of invaders have since integrated changes for good and ill over the millennia, but it should be remembered that travel by ship was probably easier than overland through thick forests and across rivers and mountains.

kentucky wildcats

December 10, 2012 at 19:32

The original galicians were the basques not the people in galicia now
"You do not have to be a Biblical scholar to know that God Almighty was referring to his real Chosen People as the English and their Celtic-Saxon brethren who, largely emanating from the Basques (the original Celts), came to settle on the coastal shores of the British Isles, which includes Ireland" English journalist Mike James
The basques(the original europeans) are the milesians and they speak the oldest language aka the original one

RelativelyWelsh

Amjad Sergiwa

December 16, 2012 at 21:16

Hi
Guys Guys Guys .. no need for genetics , no one could believe that a group of germanic tribes either Dutch or Scandinavian coming to the English shores crossing the sea in boats and then changed the the whole race of the people who have already been there for centuries or maybe thousands of years , of course they (GERMAN TRIBES) came to the land of the English but they were only tribes on boats and they just mixed with the much greater number of people of the isle , counting on reason History would need so many boats that could carry a number of people equals relatively to their English descendants of today ... finally I have once read on a book that the Danish tribes who came to England were about 5000 and the English (Celtic Race) on their own land were more than a million ( I bet you all know maths )...
I never been to England or any English speaking country before and yet I can't help loving England .. GOD SAVE YOUR COUNTRY ,,,
Now I leave you all in peace

Colin Berry

January 20, 2013 at 21:46

Has anyone suggested that the Saxons became Anglo-Saxons by means of a protection racket, at least in the first instance. Why squander a valuable source of labour, one that understands the local crops, soil and conditions. Instead, they installed a headman and his family to oversee operations, being content to take a (major) proportion of the farm produce. In return they offered protection from - guess what? Yup, other immigrant Saxons. That way they amplified their presence in terms of power and control, while having a minimal impact on the gene pool. Each party, boss man and employee, would have kept themselves apart initially, intermarriage being frown upon, at least for the first few centuries until the identities of one gradually merged with the other to produce today's English. Not so much conquest - more a case of creeping takeover, largely bloodless, except for some sporadic "example-making" of those who refused to cooperate.
As for Stephen Oppenheimer: I was quite taken with his ideas initially, when reading about them, and did a couple of posts on my original (Old) Dreams and Daemons blog. But I did not get on at all well with his book, and felt, among other things, it would have benefited from some fairly radical pruning and editing. I might have another go shortly, but can't but help feel he should have stuck to the genetics, and kept his precocious proto-Germanic ideas under wraps until there was some more solid evidence.
Colin Berry, aka sciencebod

Enigma

Enigma

January 24, 2013 at 13:01

Well my scratchy friend, it`s not who starts it but who finishes it! Theb point is that the whole definition of `Celt` appears somewhat vague, let`s face we don`t even they came here, perhaps it was just their culture, a bit like imported US culture you see around the world today. The Angles and Saxons were here though perhaps there is some question over numbers. Unlike some`Celts` though, modern English people tend not to get so hot under the collar when their identity is questioned.

Scratchy7929

January 25, 2013 at 15:48

Wasn't the Saxon Shore created to KEEP OUT the Saxon's & Frank's (all other pirates - lnc. Irish, Vikings etc.).After a few decades (while Britain was still under Roman rule), weren't these defences (on both sides of the English channel) manned by desirting / conscripted Saxon soldier's / sailer's.
The Saxon shore wasn't named so, due to the fact they controlled those area's, to begin with anyway.A common mis-understanding.

enigma

January 25, 2013 at 16:16

Angleland was a geographical location,migrants brought the name with them. The name England didn't change with the reintroduction of Christianity anymore than that of any ethernation. The whole thrust of this article is that the dominant gene legacy comes from the Basque area, not Anglo Saxon,roman,Norman or even belt. By the way there is no evidence that the angles or Saxons did carry out a military conquest,as the article alto confirms.

And now for something completely different… | The Turin Shroud: but for the pseudo-science it might have been dismissed long ago as a medieval fake

Ernie W

February 9, 2013 at 10:12

Good day all,
Please forgive me but I like to list some facts. 1. The is no German DNA project so how would you know that your ancestry comes from German. 2 Germans had many medievil Slavic tribes but thats right if they speak German they are not Slavic. 3. Celtic dna does not exist because it is a Culture from the Iron age. And there where many cultures before the Celts. 4. If mass mirgration happened explain why in over 1400 years not one Avar or Hun grave has been been located on Bohemian soil. History gets rewritten all the time and continues to be updated. So read and learn.
http://www.sachsen.de/en/1068.htm

John drummond

February 24, 2013 at 03:52

I've studied most of the comments. What an amazing response and interst shown in the question of who we (English) really are, and where we are from. I prefer it remains a mystery, much more romantic than the alternative.

max

February 27, 2013 at 09:07

the people normally mistake north spanish with the southern spanish. the north of spain was never conquered by the muslim and didnt got much mixed with saharian people.
anyone that goes to catalonia, aragon, the basque country, asturias or galicia can see the similarities with the people in the brit islands.

Barry

March 5, 2013 at 22:56

Complete BS I'm from Australia, my family migrated from Newcastle, without hearing my accent, you would think I was German or Scandinavian. I've got no doubt at all that most people are a mix of the original British isles stock and Invading/ migrating north Germanic peoples.
Look at your genetic claims, the sample sizes, the controlling for if the people were local to the area, and obvious bias also the fact that when a population grows from a smaller number of founding individuals the DNA is going to differ from the original source population.
Think about this a certain DNA sequence "signiture" is common in say Denmark, maybe 60% of population there having it, the small source population to England may have spread from individuals with a lower proportion of that sequence due to selection from disease or many other factors, so for starters genetically you are always going to see what appears to be an underestimation just due in fact to this founding effect on the DNA.
Secondly you really have to be careful who you are choosing to DNA test. These events did not take places millions of years ago, they were relatively recent, and there is a good deal of evidence, written and physical to support it.
Finally, my grandfathers Y DNA does show that he is of Scandinavian/ German origin, which is at odds with your results here. I'm sure many other people would have similar results.
The other thing to consider is it is not all or nothing with genetics, you can be part Germanic part Celtic or original British Isles mix, and that is in fact what I strongly believe most English people are. But I think that the people to the north and North East are definitely more Germanic in appearance than the people to the south and in Wales.

Obviousness

March 20, 2013 at 22:46

Half of you people here, are using basque heritage to try and prove that you are *olive* skinned and *dark*. I guess being of north european / central european heritage is not "exotic" enough for the english.
Let me state one thing though. Very few people in england will have true olive skin, extremely few. The basque do not have olive skin either. Have any of you traveled to other parts of europe? Even then you might only pick what you want to see, but the French are the same as the english look wise. In the south they might get a bit more tanned in the summer but by no means are even a majority *olive* skinned. I was in basque country in 2004 in the winter. The people are pretty much indistinguishable from british or french.
So using this to prove that you have dark features is barking up the wrong tree. You might have a better chance of getting olive skin from an ancestor from india. Truth is though 95 percent of people don't have olive skin. Most of europe is very light skinned and pale. I lived in Rome for school. If i counted for how many british talking about they could fit in because they have olive skin it would be over 15 times. I tell them they would never fit in because the majority of people in Rome *do not* have olive skin. It's just a belief that persist to be true and will never go away. In deep southern italy, pale skin is still extremely common. Pale skin is still common even in malta, and there we can start talking about olive skin being as equal or higher to pale. but still pale is not considered a minority. People in Spain all over are mostly light skinned. If you goto Seville and you see a few dark people you will be like, oh boy they are dark down here. Not to mention your eyes just glance over the rest of the population because they don't fit your dream stereotype of dark tanned and "exotic"
so if you want prove darkness, claim southern greek heritage from the islands, malta, how about some left over north african soldiers that used to stay in Britain. I will say it again though, I don't care how dark any north or central or even southern in many cases european thinks he / she is, they are most likely *not* olive skinned.
It's not a lie if one believes it as they say

Richard

April 13, 2013 at 17:13

As I have said elsewhere, I have recently returned from Norway. I cannot say that the Norwegians looked any different from most Britons, except that they they looked fitter and happier.
When I was born and up until I was about 8 or so, I was a blue eyed blonde. Then as I got older my hair turned brown. What does that say about racial origins I wonder? I might add I was not unique. I think most kids of my generation (post war baby boom) had the same change in hair colour.

John

April 16, 2013 at 01:35

I hold the personal view-based on what I've observed-that 70% of Spaniards and 70% of Scots and Welsh look the same.
Only 5% of Scots have blond hair,hardly aligning them with Anglo Saxon or Scandinavian ancestry.
I'm not surprised by these findings.
Plenty of British people with dark hair and eyes could pass for Italian,Greek or Spanish.
Remember Basil Faulty rediculing his Spanish 'birdbrain' waiter on faulty towers? They both looked exactly the same race.

John

April 21, 2013 at 14:18

A lot of arrogant assumption in this supposed thesis.
Since when has there been a british race anyway,
The term british isles which is offensive to most Irish people, is a invention of the 18th century.
up until the early 20th century evry part of westminster's terrorist empire were labelled british. Ireland is no more naturally british than India was, made British by force of Westminster state terrorism.
The sheer arrogance and ignorance of this supposed thesis.
What about the millions of irish who emigrated into Britain over the years. How many millions would their offspring have now. Credible estimates place the Irish DNA in Britain at 25%.
The population before the westminster designed supposed famine in Ireland.
was near 9 million, the population of the entire island of britain was only 12 million.
Millions of you supposed English or Britsh are Irish.
Oppenheimer is as ignorant as most from britian who assume a British identity for everyone, sorry that does not add up historically.
British is even more mythical than Anglop saxons

Val

May 11, 2013 at 13:18

Even if the wipeout myth was true which even if you are of the pro anglo-saxon English side, have to accept just was not the case, the movement of not Britons, but Welsh, Scottish, and English since the unions to form this Country, have been massive, thus, those 3 groups have created a British race as a whole. Obviously, those three groups never had to do that, because basically all us Britons are the same, but even more so because of the migration around Britain. I myself am a product of the union. Most of my ancestors originally come from Scotland and Cornwall, even though I have never been to those parts of the Country. I dare say there are many, if not more ancestors from the victors of Bannockburn in England than there is in Scotland. I know there are so many Welsh surnames in England too, not including those maidan names that have married and taken on what is seen as a English name
I feel that because we are Country and the union is natural and Britons are all the same, this is one reason why we have nationalism in Britain, because people want to be not British (even though it is our natural true selves) but something else.
The other reasons are political, and that is felt by not just Scotland or Wales but huge parts of England that feel cut off from Westminster and also manipulation from nationalist polticians add to this.

Alyson

June 12, 2013 at 18:10

Reply to Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens
I did not suggest that the inhabitants of 30,000 years ago were Celts. I was following on from my previous comment that the Welsh (Cymric) language still has words in common with Hindi, which might indicate a more distant historical link to a smaller global population.
The term Celts loosely describes the people who sailed the Atlantic coasts and islands, of what were still densely forested lands, and their Celtic (Gallic) languages developed later.
The Basque language is unique however in not being Indo-European in origin.

Janko54

N.D.B.

July 16, 2013 at 19:39

The term 'Indo-European' refers to a language group, not a population.
Modern English, classical Latin, Sanskrit and Hindi are all Indo-European languages.
The 'Indo-Europeans' were not 'a small minority'. That sentence doesn't make any sense.

Neil Wheatley

July 24, 2013 at 13:00

Following the recent change of evidence concerning the Neanderthals, ie every body has Neanderthal DNA except the africans. It would be interesting to know if this group of Basques have a higher percentage of Neanderthal genes than other europeans. This would help explain why this group survived the ice age and also why the Basques have such powerful frames and unique culture and also other unique traits such as blood type. As they repopulated europe and Britain their DNA changed as they came into contact with other groups....

andrew galea

James Ensor

August 28, 2013 at 19:31

What can be said about the Picts? I understand that a specific Pictish gene has been discovered peculiar to the people of north-eastern Scotland. Even today people, in this region tend to be taller, slimmer, sometimes with larger noses and ears than people to the south and west. They also often have very narrow feet, only otherwise found in the Baltic countries. This would seem to be indicative of another early incursion of people from across the North Sea, with so far as one can see from the limited relics, a different culture and language and a remarkable ability to carve animal figures in stone.

James Ensor

August 30, 2013 at 09:19

Galician is close to Portuguese and Portuguese can understand Spaniards, but the reverse is more difficult not least because of the tortured pronunciation of Portuguese.
The Picts were clearly not short and dark. On the contrary, they and their descendants are tall and fair. They appear to have built encampments on peninsulas which suggests that they may have been fisherman and seafarers. Given the relatively short distance from Orkney, Shetand and the north-east coast of Scotland to Norway and the Baltic, it seems likely that they would have arrived by ship, perhaps later than other incomers. If they spoke Cetic, their carvings would have been easily interpreted. I am sure that they picked it up later just as they later took on english.

paul macallister

September 8, 2013 at 17:46

one thing is that is clearly apparent even to this day, is that the South Welsh are clearly of Mediterranean (Iberian) stock. you only have to look at some famous people of South Wales (origin), such as actress Catherine Zeta Jones, football manager Chris Coleman, London comic Alan Davies, Welsh comic Rob Brydon, to see the classic dark hues that are omnipresent in South Wales people. a lot more than in other parts of the UK.

Suriani

September 13, 2013 at 17:00

The "race" element is open to discussion depending on the latest opinions or advances in genetics. If you're interested in that stuff, a bit like genealogy, fine. The more fascinating story is linguistic. The language named "Celtic" shares features with others. This has given rise to conjectural families eg Italo-Celtic and Celto-Semitic. The latter on the basis of person postfixed pronouns, a two tense system and verb initial sentences. All fascinating stuff, but not helping one jot in saving Welsh, both varieties of Gaelic, Breton, Cornish and Manx from extinction. If they disappear a distinct linguistic worldview disappears too.

Will Hobson

September 13, 2013 at 18:42

Isn't it strange that you can find a lot of dark native britons especially jn Wales and London with olive skins and brown eyes. Yet is fairly common to find fair ir blonde haired and blue eted Sicilians due to part Norman and Viking mixing, Greeks, Spanish, north Pakistani's and Iranians. Countries people normally associate as a sark haired olive skinned peoples. The Galicians too claim to be goidelic celts akin to the Manx, West Scots and Irish. Bear in mind also there was a region in central Turkey called Galatia.

Will Hobson

Joel

September 15, 2013 at 01:20

I have my own hypothesis about this, and I am more than open to information that refutes it. It would explain a handful of different historical, genetic, and archaeological phenomena. It is based on a few different things: some of the oldest evidence of humans in Europe is from Western Europe, 30-40 thousand years ago, or more; several Native American tribes along the American east coast have neolithic European genes (albeit a small percentage of their genes); there is evidence of tools found in eastern North America that are identical to tools found in Western Europe from the same time period (about 20 thousand years or so ago); some preserved "bog" bodies, about 10 thousand years old, have been found in northern Florida that are directly related to modern western Europeans; although contested, there are those who maintain that King Tut was part of the same haplogroup as most Western European men alive today, based on the recent analysis of his DNA; the Basque people, while speaking a different language from the rest of the Western Europeans, are genetically related to them.
Given that information, my hypothesis (and please let me know if someone else has already thought of this. It is not my desire to take credit for someone else's idea) is that after humans left Africa, a population of people from the stock of people that were Caucasoidal from somewhere in Western Asia migrated back down toward the Mediterranean and North Africa. That population migrated across the southern border of the Mediterranean toward Gibraltar, some of whom stayed behind along the way leaving some of their genes behind (such as those who would later become Pharaohs). Those people, possibly heavy into fishing, went to the west coast of Spain (possibly east as well, becoming the Iberians), up into France, and then, when the glaciers retreated, up into the British Isles. If they were a fishing people and had done some boating, some of them could have kept moving north, following the sea life along the edge of the ice sheet into North America, eventually working their way south.
As those same people didn't venture too far inland in Europe, they also didn't venture too far inland in North America, being assimilated into the populations from northeast Asia, leaving a relatively small genetic footprint in a geographically limited area.
As they were a fishing population, they would have gotten plenty of vitamin D from the sea life, and while the decreased sunlight would have caused their skin to get lighter, it would not have gotten as light as the Europeans who came from inland western Asia, and certainly not as light as the Nordic peoples. Thus those coastal peoples as a whole would have a somewhat darker complexion, which could explain why the Welsh can tend to have some darker features.
On the whole, I don't find it completely ridiculous that Europe could have first been populated (I couldn't say how extensively) via Gibraltar before it was ever populated via western Asia, some going west up the Atlantic coast north from Spain, and some going east along the northern Mediterranean. And I don't pretend to know what factors caused the Indo-European languages to dominate Europe the way they did. I suspect that Europe was populated from at least two directions, meeting somewhere in the middle, but with the Easterners' language(s) dominating, and the languages of those who came through Spain becoming extinct (except for modern Basque).
Thoughts?

James Ensor

September 16, 2013 at 12:17

Stephen Oppenheimer certainly supports your view that the British Isles were populated by Basques after the Ice Age retreated northward. He works mostly from genetic evidence. He believes that the Basque people once occupied a far larger area of the Continent but retreated into Northern Spain as the ice drove them south into a warmer refuge. He suggests that migrating peoples entering Europe generally crossed the Dardanelles or what is now Ukraine rather than the Straits of Gibraltar. But it must be hard to establish precise routes and the Arabs did later cross into Iberia, this way.
He considers that Western Europe was virtually the last place to be inhabited by humans and Neanderthals, starting to move north between 7,500 and 15,000 years ago. North America was populated much earlier across the Bering Straits. It is often suggested that Europeans also arrived there well before Columbus, perhaps sailing friom Greenland.
The extent to which fisher folk were also sea farers and moved by small boats along the coasts from river estuary to river estuary does seem to have been overlooked. It is certainly a much simpler route to follow than traversing the Pyrenees passes, especially before the use of horses or mules.
My own view would be that the Basques, who are still keen fishers and excellent sailors would have come to Britain by sea, perhaps in a long series of hops up the French coast. I believe that the Picts came into North Eastern Scotland in similar fashion across the North Sea. The Scots, themselves, a Celtic people, are known to have traversed from Ireland by boat into the West of Scotland. Maybe they crossed into Ireland from England or Wales also by sea, at an earlier date.
Oppenheimer believes that Basque origin accounts for three quarters of the genetic make-up in all British Isles nations, with little influence from Angles, Saxons , Celts, Romans, Vikings or Normans. Obviously the complex and abstruse language was abandoned. But some peolle have noted links between Basque and Caucasian languages, at least in the peculiar grammar.

Mike Ellwood

October 8, 2013 at 02:34

For what it's worth, Scandinavians also vary quite a bit in shape, size, and colouring. I've known very tall Norwegians and Swedes, and very short Danes, but not all Danes are short, and not all Norwegians and Swedes are tall, and they are not all blond(e), either. It's probably wisest not to read too much into obvious signs of appearance (especially given that hair can easily be recoloured), and go by genetics where the numbers are available.
FWIW, the earlier work of Professor Bryan Sykes (author of "Blood of the Isles") seems to pretty much support that of Stephen Oppenheimer, and he noted that the genetics of the vast majority of the inhabitants of modern England were about the same as they had been in the Neolithic Age. Furthermore, the genetic input of the Romans and Normans was negligible. That of the Vikings (especially in the North-East) and of the Anglo-Saxons (especially in the South-East of England) was higher, but less than 20%. The exception was Shetlands and Orkney, where the Viking input is about 40%.
(Please see his Wikipedia page for more detail).

Mike Ellwood

October 8, 2013 at 02:49

(Just agreeing with the person defending Oppenheimer's use of the word "England"):
Quite so, and while no one disputes that Celtic languages were spoken in Wales, Scotland and Ireland in antiquity (we might quibble about which languages though, especially in Scotland), the big question is what language was spoken in what we now called England (or for short, just "England"), before the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came, especially in central and south-east England (or roughly a line drawn south and easy between The Wash and The Solent. Was it Celtic, or was it Germanic, and if it was Celtic, how did it disappear almost without trace? Almost no loan-words, and only a few place-names, and these are disputed by the people at the Proto-English.org website - (to which I have no connection, by the way).

Mike Ellwood

October 8, 2013 at 02:53

(To the person who claimed Oppenheimer had said the British had been speaking a Germanic language for tens of thousands of years) -
It would have been mad if he had said that, but he didn't say it. Not that I can see, anyway.

Greg

October 8, 2013 at 10:53

Did the `Jutes and Angles push the tribes back to the mountains of Wales`? This goes to the heart of the debate, the origins of the British population. My understanding is that DNA suggests far fewer Angles came to this island than previously supposed and there is no conclusive archeological evidence of conflict or battles, as there are from the time of the Roman conquest.

James Ensor

October 8, 2013 at 11:30

It was once thought that the Angles and Saxons committed a holocaust in England and wiped out the existing population almost entirely, driving the remaining tribes into Cornwall and Wales. Oppenheimer`s genetic research repudiates this theory for he believes that only 5.5% of people in England derive from Angle or Saxon ancestry. Except in Kent, the Jute influence would be even less, whilst Vikings seem to have had impact mostly on the Northern and Western isles, Cumbria, the Meon Valley and Isle of Wight. You can certainly notice more fair skins, blond hair and light eyes in these districts, even today. Caesar`s Roman legionaires mostly came from Portugal, where he was based before invading England,
West Pembrokeshire is known to have had a comparatively recent influx of Flemish weavers, who were originally traced by their A blood group, before advances in DNA research. Basques are very high in Rh+ and entirely lacking in B blood groups. But it seems that DNA is a better guide to origin.
The ScotlandDNA research group based at Edinburgh University has recently suggested that R1b with the S530 marker indicates ancient Picts rather than the Scots that came into Scotland from Ireland, who have M222. S530 is thought to have emerged 3,000 years ago, It accounts for 10% of Scotsmen. It is believed to have spread rapidly with people who crossed the North Sea bringing with them the cultivation of wild oats and the cuisine of porridge, from the Baltic coast, into a land still inhabited by hunter-gatherers.
.

Mike Ellwood

October 8, 2013 at 14:28

Richard on April 13 2013 said:

As I have said elsewhere, I have recently returned from Norway. I cannot say that the Norwegians looked any different from most Britons, except that they they looked fitter and happier.
When I was born and up until I was about 8 or so, I was a blue eyed blonde. Then as I got older my hair turned brown. What does that say about racial origins I wonder? I might add I was not unique. I think most kids of my generation (post war baby boom) had the same change in hair colour.

Quite: on a short trip which included Denmark, Sweden and Norway, I found exactly the same sort of variety. The only common factor was that I found the women very beautiful, especially in Norway, but that means nothing, since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I might have only noticed the beautiful ones! We need to beware of making subjective judgments from limited observations.
I too have blue eyes & was very blonde when young, and am now darkish The same is true of my children, and appears to have been true of my wife (Yorks+Lancs heritage).

Alyson

October 8, 2013 at 16:10

Stephen Oppenheimer's fondness for the Basques may stem from the homogeneity of their language and locality but the western seaboard of the Atlantic brought people to trade along all the coasts for millenia. This mix of peoples may not have penetrated much in the inner parts of the country hence the meeting of Celts and Saxons midway.
Genetic testing will determine more of the intermixing of different tribes over time, and needs to also look at the dominant strands in the female dna history to determine what mixing occurred where and when. The first book I read on this theme was by a Welsh academic but this is from the Irish perspective:
"The Atlantean Irish"
(NOW REVISED AND REPRINTED)
by Bob Quinn
Quote:
"This thesis is refreshing in that it states that the Irish are not a homogenous fiction called 'celtic' but an energetic mixture of many peoples and cultures inhabiting what for thousands of years has essentially been an island trading post.
The maritime perspective brings them a lot closer to mediterranean peoples - including Arabs and Berbers - than to the jaded fictions of 'Celts' or 'Aryans'."
THE Atlantean Irish book and films show that the island of Ireland was never a remote outpost on the fringes of Europe. From the hunters and fishermen of the megalithic age, then the Carthaginians of the 1st Milennium to the crooked investors, carpetbaggers and drug smugglers of the modern age, from Eastern monks fleeing persecution to 19th century prosletysers, from the Mediterranean to the Baltic, the island has always been regarded as a lucrative trading post and a desirable residence.
This Atlantean adventure, in the Bob Quinn version, is not the fanciful residue of a submerged continent or a racist fiction called 'Celts'.
It is a revelation of Irish identity using much the same sources and scholarship that have been available for the past 1000 years to armchair scholars and writers. But here, for the first time, their conclusions are exposed to the light of commonsense i.e. historic reality, field research and wide travel.
The basic principle is that the sea does not divide peoples - it unites all countries and human beings.
'In megalithic times the Irish sea was bright with argonauts' - E.G.Bowen
For a couple of centuries the Vikings ruled the Atlantic waves from the mediterranean to Norway. Dublin was their slave emporium. 800 years later the pirate corsairs from North Africa maintained the connections - as far as Iceland.They even kidnapped the entire population of Baltimore, Co. Cork and brought them back to Algiers.
The island of Ireland was and is a traffic island.
The project began innocently enough when, nearly thirty years ago, an Irish film maker, Bob Quinn, set out to show that the singing style of his neighbours in Gaelic-speaking Conamara in the West of Ireland was much more than a debased and incomprehensible version of ballad-singing - which was the attitude of anglophones.
Over the following thirty years he showed how similar it was to North African and Afro-Asian singing and daringly went on to discover historic, religious, artistic, archaeological and linguistic similarities with Hamito-Semitic cultures.
A trilogy of films ensued. They won several awards, were acclaimed internationally. The film maker wrote a book on the subject which he recently updated and published (with an introduction by archaeologist Barry Cunliffe , Oxford professor of European Archaeology) under the title "The Atlantean Irish: Ireland's Oriental and Maritime Heritage" (Lilliput Press, Dublin 2005)
http://conamara.org/index.php?page=atlantean
Apologies for the long quotation here

sokolov

Sergio García

October 12, 2013 at 17:55

Good evening.
I am from Mallorca and I would like to make my points about the matter. Here I go:
1.- RACISM / NARCISSISM: I observe much racism when discussing this kind of topics, especially by poor people who try to convince themselves about having more in common with Germanic peoples just because they feel better if they believe they are more related to blond people. Yes, so it is, so childish, so ridiculous, so narcissistic!
2.- PERSONAL OBSERVATION: Me myself, as a Mallorcan who have observed hundrends of thousands of Europeans every year of my life, I can firmly assert that British People are the most different and special Germanic People, as it were. In general terms, they are of course lighter than most of Spaniards (but not than all of us), but it would be difficult to me to classify them just as Germanic. I see me myself and my family much closer to English people than other Germanic pepoles. - Basques, genetically speaking, are not an isolated group of people in Spain; I mean, they have a lot in common with the rest of Spaniards. They did spread themselves down in Spain in a large number when the Reconquista times.
3.- LINGUISTICLY: As much as the Basque lanuguage has not left words in English vocabulary, I dare say that there is one and very rooted gramatical trait in her wich is shared by English, Basque and Spanish language: Continuous Tenses (and hugely used). I mean: To use the verb "to be" + verb-ing. This happens very similarly in Spanish and Basque. In Spanish we use of course as well the verb "to be" (estar) + verbs-endo/ando. It is to say: the common trait is: "to be + verb-low vowel-n". This happens only in our languages and does not happen in the rest of the Germanic languages nor in French or in Latin. It does exist in standard Italian as well but in a much lesser extent than does in English and Spanish, and presumible introduced by North East Spaniards when they ruled Milan and the South Half of Italy. (I haven't found the origins of this tenses in Italian yet). So, "I'm singing, You were talking, I had been looking..." simply don't existe in French, German, Swedish, Dutch...
4.- CONCLUSSION: I have the very strong intuition that Britons and Basques and Spaniars are very close ones other. And as well as that, I believe the Celts are the perfect word and historical people to put there where there are important and historical doubts and shadows. But: Did they really ever exist such one thing as the Celts! I don't think so.
So, thank you for reading, and don't forget visiting Mallorca!
Good by, by by, Adiós!

James Ensor

October 14, 2013 at 13:13

Catalans and Basques are certainly genetically related by the large R1b haplotype which runs from both the Mediterranean and Biscay coasts of Spain along the Atlantic shore of France and into Flanders. It is the dominant group in all of the islands of Britain only becoming weaker in islands like Orkney.Shetland and Man, which are known to have strong Norse rather than narrowly German origins. I do not believe that there are many British people who would prefer to be closely related to Germans rather than say Catalans, for instance, But we all believed until we saw modern genetic research that we were predominantly Anglo-Saxon. This it now seems is false.
The absence of Basque names and Basque words in English is a puzzle. But there are not many Celtic words or names either in England except in Cornwall. You are quite correct about the two present tenses in English - I sing and I am singing -, which seem so difficult to speakers of other European languages. Does ths double case also exist in Basque? in Catalan?

James Ensor

October 21, 2013 at 12:30

The article in Der Spiegel which suggested that the people "who hate the Germans more than any other race - the British - are really krauts," was based on research done by Professor Mark Thomas at UCL in 2002. It also cited Heinrich Haerke from Reading Univesity who did an archaeological study near Oxford at the same time.
As advances in reading both male and female DNA have been very considerable in the past 11 years and more and more mutations in each version of R1b haplotype have been discovered ( which define population subgroups) so opinions on the origins of the British peoples have evolved.
Male and female studies can give different results where a ruling population of one race kept many female slaves on another race. But most experts think that Oppenheimer`s research is more accurate than Thomas` older study.
One wonders whether Der Spiegel has a correspondent in Greece?

James Ensor

October 21, 2013 at 15:24

Der Spiegel`s report is inaccurate in many respects. I have checked Professor Thomas` original reasearch. He checked small samples of male Y-chromosome DNA from a series of small towns stretching from North Norfolk to North Wales. These were compared with even smaller <100 samples from West Frisia in the NETHERLANDS and South NORWAY. No data was taken from modern Germany at all.
He found that the haplotype then called hg1 was most common in LLangefni at 89% and rarest in Norway at 26%. It represented over half the population of every English and Welsh town and in Frisia. This has since been identified as the Basque or Atlantic Coast haplotype as it is common in Basque Spain, though its highest occurence is in Donegal. It is defined by the mutation M269 or M343.
The second haplotype which was called hg2 ( now defined by the M405 mutation was most frequent in southern Norway, but at only 46%. This reached 42% in Fakenham and 34% in Friesland. It scarcely registered in Llangefni or in Abergele, where 39% of the population had hg21, found nowhere else in a significant quantity. This is now defined by the V13 mutation and is thought to have been brought with Roman legionaires from the Balkans.
It is known that there are many words from Old Frisian similar to modern English which are not as close in either modern Dutch or modern High German. Frisian pottery has also been found in East Anglia.
Given later DNA research by Oppenheimer and others, these results suggest to me that there were two distinct peoples, one that we might call Basques who moved right up the Atlantic Coast northwards and another that we might call Frisians who moved at a much later date from Norway through Frisia to East Anglia and the East Midlands.

F0ul

November 13, 2013 at 14:14

The article is very thoughtful, and only ruined by the comments! ;-)
Two points I feel need to be addressed is that firstly, many of the examples and proofs being used don't acknowledge that people have migrated in modern times as well. For instance, many of the people who now live in the Celtic heartland of North Wales, moved to the area from other areas in the early part of the 19th century. The place being an industrial gold mine of work. On that basis, I would suggest that areas with hotspots of Celtic genes are more likely areas where Irish families have migrated to on a regular basis over centuries.
Secondly, prior to the 7th century, Brithonic was spoken from the Firth of Forth to the Bristol Channel but this came to an end following the Battle of Chester in 616. The kings of Northumbria (who, thanks to this article could have spoken very old English) closed the route between both areas to the Welsh. This meant that over time Brithonic became old Welsh, which with even more time became modern Welsh.
However, to suggest that because a modern Welsh world sounds like a word from another language is enough evidence of a link is a very weak piece of logic deduction!

Alyson

November 13, 2013 at 22:26

Brythonic is the name, rather than Cymric (the people of the valleys) because allegedly Brutus named the islands of Britain after himself. The defeat of 10,000 Cymric warriors at Chester did indeed push the survivors back into Wales where the language survived and evolved, as all languages do.

James Ensor

November 15, 2013 at 18:06

It is hard to find any sign of the Bassque language in any of the languages spoken in the British Isles. But one ancient link does exist in counting, by twenties. Both Scots Gaelic, older Irish Gaelic and the Welsh Gaelic spoken in north Wales, count on the base of twenty. This also existed in older usage of English as in four score etc. Basque also uses this counting system up to the number 100. So does the French spoken in France but only for the numbers between 70 and 99 eg quatre vignt. It is otherwise used only in Georgian and in Danish between 50 and 99, and a few less spoken langauages.

Sergio García

November 24, 2013 at 16:20

Hello again,
I know it is difficult to find other kind of links between Basque and Irish or Welsh, but let's have into account some Premises and then some Further Conclussions:
1st. PREMISE - TRUE FACT:
It doesn't really exist just ONE thing as the Basque language. Modern Basque is an "artificial" languge modernly designed by linguistics so as to unify the very different and split Basque Dialects, almost different languages.
2nd PRESMISE - POSSIBLE FACT:
According to the evidence, human beings arrived in the British Isles thousands of years ago. Some scientists say it happened about 12 thousands of years ago. That is quite some time! In such a long period any single language which not be perfectly clear in phonetic terms is very likely to evolve and split itself into separate languages.
3rd PREMISE - TRUE FACT:
When the Romans came to Ibreria, there were here a lot of Iberian peoples, amgong them the Basques. All of those peoples were finally defeated by the Romans and interbreded with them (and with Germanics and Moors later on), except the Basques, who remained the most isolated iberian people. But they were not found by the Romans where they are now, but far away from the sea, particularly: down the southwest of the Pyrinees. The current Basque country is the region where the Basques moved following the Roman Invasion and following the possible "Iberian invasion" of the British Isles.
This very region is where Dr. Oppenheimer has now found the most common genes between today's Spanish and British Pepoles.
Therefore my INTUITIONS are that:
1.- The Basques are not a unique people, but the most isolated iberian people whose language have not disappear and whose genes are the least mixed with Romans, Moors and Germanics.
2.- The Basques did not get into the British Isles. It could have been other Iberian pepoles, genetically equal to the Basques (liguistically different or similar), those who might have arrived there and whose genes are the base of the genes of both the English and the Spanish. And in the case of the Basques, the Irish, the Welsh and the Scots that blood would not only be the base, but the total of theirs.
3.- The Base of the Spanish blood is the one from the Iberians, not from the Romans, nor from the Moors or the Germanics.
4.- The Iberian Peoples, and later on the Britons, might have had languages in which CONTINUOUS TENSES (I woud be singing, I am watching, I was sleeping, I will be doing...) would have existed. And afterwards those peoples would have badly learned Latin in the case of Spain, and the languages of the Anglos, Saxons and Jutes, in the case of the Britain, but by adapting to themselves those foreign verbs and grammars, without ever abandon the VERY USEFUL CONTINUOUS TENESES.
This is my theory.
Thank you for reading.

Sergio García

David Paterson

November 25, 2013 at 09:20

A subject which fascinates me but which suffers from the lack (or maybe misuse) of standard or commonly agreed terms.
For example, I think Oppenheimer's hypothesis is that most of the population of the UK and Ireland originated genetically in "the Basque refuge". I understand that term to mean the area of Northern Spain that was ice-free during the ice age and from which some of Europe was re-populated (similar to "the Baltic refuge" in SE Europe). But that does NOT mean that the people there were "the Basques" in any modern or even historical sense - it was tens of thousands of years ago.
Then there is the misleading use (though probably not deliberate) of the names of countries and regions that have only existed for a very short time relative to the migrations that spread the DNA markers. For example, as has been pointed out above (re the battle of Chester) Brythonic languages were native to much of what is now NW England and SW Scotland at that time - not surprisingly because they were probably both largely parts of the ancient state of Strathclyde - unlike what is now NE England and SE Scotland which were parts of Northumbria, where a Germanic language was spoken. The East-West border that separates Scotland and England had not even been imagined at that time, the "border" ran North-south. To use the the term "Scotland" for anything much before the 9th century BCE has little meaning - centuries after the migrants from "Ireland", "England" and "Norway" started to arrive and millennia after the hunter-gatherers inched their way up the coast of Western Europe from the Basque refuge.
Though it is hard to divorce our thinking from modern people and places, we need to try a bit harder.

David Paterson

Miss Vivian

November 26, 2013 at 20:55

I get it, my family is descended from Romans? (I think they were short and tan?) I guess they got busy with the natives or stuck around for fun. But I do take back the bit about the big noses, they're not that bad!

James Ensor

November 26, 2013 at 22:38

Here are two pairs of phrases in Basque with their English equivalent
etortzen naiz : I come
ikusten dut : I see
etortzen ari naiz : I am coming
ikusten ari naiz : I am seeing .
I am seeing is not common in English except in the phrase I cannot believe what I am seeing. This structure does not exist in either German or french, which provide the bulk of modern English. Is it a lost link to the Basque ancestry. Do similar forms exist in Welsh?

Nikol Grigoryan

November 30, 2013 at 18:41

Here a copy of a comment from another forum.(http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t167634/) Vahan Sargisyan President of International Linguistical Academy
BASQUES AND ARMENIANS
THE SECRET PAGES OF EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION
At The End of past century english scientist Edward Spencer Johnson absolutely accidentally has done very interesting opening.Being already well-known basqolog, Johnson has decided, in purposes of expansion of own outlook, study armenian language,and has enterred in parisian "Ecole special", in the class of famous philologist Ogust Career.The Result was highly unexpected: after whole only bimonthly courses Johnson has noticed that many armenian words practically are identical with basque. His own cogitations about these lexical coincidences Johnson has published in 1884, in journal "Euskera" ("Basque language") under intriguing headline "Basque words in armenian language". The List noticed the parallels between more than fifty words. It was as thunder in clear sky, for the scientists , who already ,for a long time inhere under hypnosis of basque-georgian hypothesis.Johnson couldn't explain the reason of existance of the similiarites among basque-armenian and thought that those may be comes from geogean,regardless of the fact that they have no parallels in georgian.Besides it the question is highly important layer of vocabulary spare, traditionally considering suit fund of each language. And most curious in that discovered basque-armenian coincidences in both languages are at a rate of full rapport :for example (with transcriptions) BS- char «bad, evil» - ARM. char «bad, evil», BS. anti «from there» - ARM. anti «from there», BS. ais «wind» -ARM. ais «wind», BS. zati «separate» - ARM. zat «apart», BS. tegi «place» - ARM. tegh «place» ..... The second important opening in that field was made after more than fourth century .In 20-e years young basque philologist Bernardo Estornes Lasa, subsequently largest scientist and academician,concern with collection of basque folk-lore material in Rapcal valley, in east part of province Navarra.So here , in village Isaba, nearly on most east border of Navara, Estornes Lasa has written local legend about that, that village Isaba is founded by armenians,which were first inhabitants of Navarra and the ancestors of basque folk. The legend tells that leader of basque folk called Aytor, he has arrived from Armenia with his seven sons and in their honour has founded seven settlings in Navarra.It Is spoken also that visitor armenian, ancestor of basques, knew secret of processing the metal. Subsequently in archives of villages have found the old-time manuscript, a historic chronic , which confirms the spoken legends.Highly notable that in basque language a name Isaba is translated as "Trace of ancestors".At though this can seem absolutely incredible, but fact remains the fact , in village Isaba hitherto exists a road, which carries the name Erminia.The Public tradition links its with the name of an Armenia - in honour of first colonizers of Navarra. All this could be shown as figment of imagination of basque oldsters, as for a long time consider many researchers, however the science has enterred , in particular linguistics and historiography, as well as mythology. In basque language a name of storied ancestor of basques Aytor verbatim means "Received from Aya" or "Occurring from Aya" which enough exactly corresponds to armenian design 'hay tor'("grandson of armenian").The fact was shown by the known german scientist Ioseph Karst. It was also proven that the famous ancestor of armenians Hayk really has a grandson, whose name was Pask. For the first time on possible relationship between armenian name Pask and etnoname of basque has indicated bay Nikolayos Marr. It's Interesting that in basque language exists an expression 'aytoren seme' ("thoroughbred"), verbatim meaning "the son of Aytor". This is indicative of that ,that in antiquities amongst basques thoroughbred were considered only one,who leds origin from one of the direct descendants of the ancestor Aytor, arrived from Armenia. The Further researches have brought new openings. The all said facts and coincidences were the only higher part of iceberg of the most great secret of european civilization.As it was realized,the theory of the armenian origin of the oldest folk of Europe has it deep roots in its historical memory and has found its reflection in basque written sources.As far back as XVI-XVII ages founders of basque national historiography Garibay,Andres de Posa and Baltasar de Echave considered Armenia the prehomeland of basques and try this prove on the base of basque-armenian toponimic coincidences... Araks (The name of a river in Armenia and in the Land of Basque) and the name of basque mountain Apalar, which was repeatedly compared with the famous biblical Ararat.Moreover, de Posa confirms that basques are from Armenia.He even elaborates that the city Taragona on was founded by armenians and on their language a name Taragona meant "commune of shepherds".It is difficult to say anything about this translation, but main in that ,that the name Taragona highly reminds the known armenian state Taron, the ancient form is - Tarawna. For three centuries the opinion of the historians about the armenian origin of basques became a national tradition and has got very broad spreading. The List of firsthands renews a spanish historian of XVII century Gaspar Eskolano , in his book about the histories of the city Valencia (1610) ,writes that after Worldwide flood a patriarch Tubal and its people disembark on the east seaside of Spains and that they talk on armenian language. Besides Gaspar Eskolano ,with exceeding accuracy, describes the place, where, according to legend, were was buried the remainses of armenians -the first inhabitants of Spain. Now on that places, on the territory of modern Catalonia , are located churches, and this prompts that point that the area was considered as saint. Regrettably, all these information too long remain in darkness of oblivion by reason of that,that in due course basque material wasn't analysed and evaluated in light given by armenian sources and armenian language. And when in twentieth years of present century german linguist Joseph Karst has proceeded to detailed and all-round study basque-armenian theory, in a sense there was already enough late.For passed period in basqology has firmly motivated hypothesis about georgian origin of basques.obtained many supporters. Eastern, but indeed purely armenian orientation of basque national tradition, create beneficial ground for "kartvelizing" of basques,more for that the armenian side continues save full indifference.It goes to that, that with basque language have begun match such georgian words,which were obvious borrowing from armenian,as in due his course had been indicated by basque academician Bernard Estorence Lasa. In 1928 a well-known german philologist Joseph Karst finally has published the results of his own studies, under headline "Alarodians and protobasques".The Book were issued in Vein on french , and has caused the enourmous resonance in scientific world.In the given work Karst has presented more than 300 basque-armenian lexical similiarites and in greater amount coinciding elements of phonetics and grammaticses, including systems of declension, conjugations and others.On this base Kerst has come into conclusion that basque and armenian are two varieties of one linguistical type, which has named the alarodian. Aside of purely linguistical material Kerst also handled the results of other sciences, in particular the ethnography and the anthropologies. It follows to note specifically that fact that Kerst came to its scientific conclusions on base of own studies without having any information on previous works, about which was spoken above.Subsequently Kerst has written several books, where has continued the motivation of theory basque-armenian ethnoligical unity, bringing new datas and proofs. As would be expected, publication of the books has caused highly negative reaction of supporters of traditional approaches in linguistics.The Campaign against Kerst had been led by Maye, famous french linguist and one of the founders of modern linguistics. Maye has fallen into fury. The Reason clearest possible: Kerst ventured to revise linguistical card of Europe and lay a new way in the opinion of Maye's school , where everything was defined long ago.Armenian language is an IE language , but basque no, and here nothing did signify neither hundreds of coincidences, nor public legends, nor history data. After negative reviews of Maye ,Kerst remain in packeded insulation, and though he continued zealous work, his studies did not render the essential influence upon development of basqology and armenology.

Nikol Grigoryan

November 30, 2013 at 19:07

Bede's "Ecclesiastical History":
"The first inhabitants were the Britons, who came from Armenia (3), and first peopled Britain southward."
Note:
(3) "De tractu Armoricano." -- Bede, "Ecclesiastical History" i. I. The word Armenia occurring a few lines above in Bede, it was perhaps inadvertently written by the Saxon compiler of the "Chronicle" instead of Armorica.
Folks,
What do you think, is it possible to make so many typos in a word,
or is the Note : (3) a political review ?

Sergio García

December 23, 2013 at 00:36

Hello Nikol
Well, I wanted to publicly share my observation of the rare coincidence of the Continuous / Progressive forms in English and Spanish. And I say rare because of the reasons I said before: it doesn't exist in Latin or in any other Germanic Languages. (My "obsession" is not Continuous Forms, but to get to know the origins of Iberian Tribes, Basques among them, and also the origins of Britons, "Celts", Germanics, Slavics... and even Homo Sapien...) Because I suspect there have been a lot of common lies around for a lot of time.
But then you go and answer me in - what I'd call - a no fair way, because you are replying me, but referring to other things. Quite different things, actually.
And I say that because I was speaking about some verbal tenses which strangely follow the same pattern both in English and Spanish. This pattern is: Conjugated "to be (= estar)" + "verb-ing (= verb-end)"; regardless of whether the name of such a pattern.
And here you go not talking about that, but about the Continuous / Progressive "Aspect". Well, Which "aspect"? By "Aspect" you've got from the wikipedia anything, as a simple and fixed word could be, that be able to express the times of the actions that English and Spanish Continuous Tenses can express.
So my question to you would be: aside from the knowlege you've got from the wikipedia regards all of the Languages you mention, which of them build their Continuous "Aspects" by using and conjugating their verbs To Be + Gerunds (ending in a vowel + "n")?
Finally, I would like to say to you that even though you think that the Basque is an Armenian People, I have to tell you that I can't believe it, anyway. They may have their own language and may try to spread to the world the message they have nothing in common with the rest of Spaniards, but that's just because they want to stupidly feel better trying to believe they are special. But they aren't. There are no reason to believe the Basques were a unique and ditinct tribe among all of the iberian tribes before the Romans. None at all.
And, if the Basques have now to be Armenians, then I think that all of the Iberian Tribes should be Armenian too. And I don't think there is a lot of likelihood of it.
Read you.

Avram Cohen

James Ensor

December 27, 2013 at 19:29

Counting by twenties which exists in an archaic form of English eg four score, also exists in Georgian and Basque. It is a clear linkage of language design although, of course overwhelmed by very many other differences. But since all European races originally emerged from the Caucasus, many thousands of years ago, I do not find it fanciful; to suggest that the people who now live in the mountains of Georgia had some form of linguistic link, albeit very tenuous with the peole who now live in the Basque region of Spain and France and in Britain. If they did, it will surely be confirmed by genetic evidence which Nikol suggests exists in the Karabakh region.

Sergio García

R

December 29, 2013 at 18:07

Sergio,
I read recently that the English language did not have the continuous/progressive present tense until recent centuries. (Shakespeare was cited as evidence of its absence in 16th century.)
(Just found the reference: Bill Bryson, "Mother Tongue", p58. I haven't checked.)
Separately, re Wallace, I have understood since childhood (1960s) that the surname 'Wallace' meant 'Welsh-speaker' and that 'Welsh' in that context meant the language spoken in the ancient British kingdom of Strathclyde, which is the area Wallace came from. As a student of the history of that time Mr Salmond is unlikely to be surprised by the suggestion that some 13th century Scots had recently been speaking a P rather than Q Celtic language (or Inglis).
The discussion of the Basques and their language is diverting and could give a further spin to the 'Black Irish' stories. My Basque friend was thought to be Black Irish while working in Glasgow. If the marker originated with the Basques, or related people, why would it be most prominent in Donegal? Is it because it's effectively the end of the line (if you're coming from the south) and therefore experienced fewer influxes and less subsequent variation? Sorry if that's a silly question - I haven't looked into the science yet.

R

December 29, 2013 at 19:06

Re my last question, I now see from Mr Oppenheimer's answers to earlier questions that he thinks that the marker is more prominent in the likes of Donegal because it is the result of earlier population movements, when the market was less diluted.

Angela

James Ensor

December 30, 2013 at 12:49

The reason for high concentrations of the Atlantic Coast gene with the M269 or M343 mutation in Donegal and the Basque homeland must be presumed to relate to the lack of later incomers after those people`s who had sheltered from the Ice Age in the Basque refuge either stayed put or movednorthwards across the Channel and the Irish Sea.

James Ensor

January 1, 2014 at 11:16

It is suggested that the present continuous tense in English developed from an earlier archaic form.
"Thus the milkmaid is at milking" developed into the familiar but archaic "the milkmaid is a-milking" and eventually reduced to "the milkmaid is milking."
It is possible that the Basque use of this idea passed via Celtic into English, which is a very modern languages that has borrowed ideas and words from all around the world.

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Sapo

January 27, 2014 at 03:21

Well, as I see it, we are all human and we all share, more or less, the same DNA, regardless of where you come from on the planet. We can all interbreed and make new human beings.
I share 99% of my DNA with the mouse in the floorboards and 60% with the Bananas in my fridge and 99.9% with the poor unfortunate apes incarcerated in the zoos. I think all this analysis of insignificant genetic differences can sometimes play into the hands of Fascists, Nazis and Racists. We have to be a bit careful and circumspect. It can be exploited by certain types.

Sapo

January 27, 2014 at 16:02

Just to add, are we not all on different yet interconnected branches of the same tree of Homo Africanus? We are all Africans really who have spread out since 200,000 YBP. The molecular anthropologists say that we are all descended from a small group of proto-humans who lived in East Africa 200,000 YBP. Their evidence is genetic markers in the mitochondrial DNA of the peoples of the Earth. In my opinion, one day we really will all be one in a totally different society without all these class and cultural divisions.

Sergio García

February 19, 2014 at 11:27

Stephen Oppenheimer seemed to be right.
Rather both interesting and intriguing results have been published today (14 of february of 2014) They are fruit of a research carried out by University College of London, Oxford University and Max Plank Institute (Germany).
They can be looked up at this funny and interactive website: http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com/
I wouldn't like to sound very pretentiously, but I think my intuitions were not very much on the wrong track. Tu sum up:
1) Old Spanish tribes before Romans, (Iberians) and Basque People were quite the same.
2) Basques have been the most isolated Iberian tribe.
3) The "purity" of those - that tribe were the eldest in Western Europe and somehow the mother of much of the peoples of Western Europe, excluding Scandinavians, but specially the mother of the British.
4) The British are chiefly the product of the interbreeding of both those Iberian tribes and Scandinavians.
So, Just joking, we could say every Englishman is the son of a Spanish mother and a Dane / Norweigian father or viceversa.
Have a good day.

James Ensor

March 6, 2014 at 10:32

This is precisely Oppenheimer`s main point that the great bulk of the population now living in the British Isles, including Ireland and Scotland, which the Romans diod not reach, are descended from people who were there before the Romans. He too says that the Norse and Anglian invaders had less influence of the native gene pool than had once been thought. Certainly neither Norsemen nor their Norman descendants nor the Anglo-Saxons committed a holocaust of the lofcal inhabitants that they encountered. Rather, over much time, the seem to have intermarried and mixed up the gene pool.
He does not call these original inhabitants Scandinavian and does not give an opinion as to whether they arrived on foot across a frozen North Sea or by boat across an unfrozen Channel. But he does suggest that these were people who had sheltered from the Ice Age which covered the northern parts of Britain in the Basquen country which now covers the French and Spanish border regions.
The genes of these people, today, still correspond closely to those possessed by about three quarters of the members of all four British nations, but a little less with the Orcadians and people of Man who are much more Scandinavian.
What I find interesting about the genetic maps, in so far as I can understand them is the link between modern Scots amd L:ithuania, I believe that the Pictish people whio left so little writen record, arrived from the Baltic lands by ship settling the North-east coast of Scotland. I cannot explain the link to the Caucasus unless these were people who migrated via the Basque lands or the Baltic.

James Ensor

ank

March 7, 2014 at 15:45

What happened to all those Celtic settlements around the Black Sea and the idea that the aboriginal Celtic peoples came from the zone where Tibet sigues into central Asia? I seem to remember that popular theory a while back. Did not these aboriginal Celts also use horses which was not the Iberian way, as I understand it.

sapo

March 8, 2014 at 19:40

I have come across this old paper on the asiatic origins of the saxons (and angles?)
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Culture/impact/persian_origin_english.htm
I know it is slightly off message, but does anybody have any views on this interesting paper? It seems that at some point in their journey west, the Saxons resided in the region of Nagorno Karabakh between the rivers of Araxes and Kur.
By the way, does anybody have a comprehensive understanding of the 'deep history' origins of the angles/saxons in Asia - with evidence, etc - even before this stop in the Armenia region?

sapo

Maria

March 10, 2014 at 14:56

I have noticed a difference in appearance between the British people in the east of the country and those in the west. Those in the east would seem to be generally taller with a larger build and lighter colouring (at least this is what I observed when there). I myself am from the west (Cornish peninsula) and people there are generally smaller, slighter in build and darker in colouring. One does not see many fair-haired people there. Possibly a small number of Nordic/Germanic people went over there and remained in the east of the country. From another article on Basque origins I also gather that the percentage of Basque DNA is slightly lower in British people in the east, particularly the north-east.

James Ensor

March 10, 2014 at 19:30

Maria, You are absolutely right. The East Coast of Scotland and England, travelling southwards from the Shetlands and Orkneys to Kent, were settled in historical times by Vikings.,Picts,Vikings again, Saxons, Angles and Jutes. All arrived I believe from the areas which are now Norway, Denmark, Lithuania and perhaps Friesland in the northern Netherlands. Finally Normans, who were originally Vikings settled in Hampshire and the Channel islands.
The West Coast reading again from Scotland down through Wales to Cormwall was settled by Celtic peoples. speaking various variants of a common but non-germanic language, probably rather earlier than the Norse arrivals in the East. The only exceptions were Cumbria and the Isle of Man, which were also settled by Vikings.
What Stephen Oppenheimer has found through DNA research, however, is that the bulk of the people in all these regions were an earlier stock that had travelled northwards from the Basque regions of what are now Spain and France.
This has been a considerable surprise to people from almost all of these regions of the British Isles who were much more aware of the later incursions, that had certainly replaced the language and culture of the earlier arrivals. ..

Maria

March 11, 2014 at 09:15

James: The difference is indeed quite striking! I live in the Netherlands and I have seen a great many people in the east of Britain who closely resemble the Dutch. This was disconcerting as I am used to the smaller, darker British in the west.
However I didn't know that the Isle of Man was settled by the Vikings, although it does seem logical as the Vikings also settled in Ireland and Wales. I am of Irish, Welsh and Breton origin so probably there is some Viking in me somewhere along the line on both sides!
The fact that the early Basques settled in the British Isles also comes as a very pleasant surprise. In another article on the same topic, I read that approximately 80 to 85% of the entire British population, including those in the east, are believed to have Basque DNA. However as I said before, this percentage is slightly lower in the east. The lowest percentage of Basque DNA has apparently been found in the region of Yorkshire but even this is 60%!
By the way, it is true that the Normans were originally Vikings but don't forget they intermarried with the local population. William the Conqueror's own ancestors include Emma of France and Conan of Brittany.
Also the Normans probably settled throughout most of England and part of Wales, as William gave them various lands in England after the Conquest. I expect a lot more Normans came over after the Conquest to settle there as well, and it seems reasonable to suppose that they too intermarried with the locals. This makes it all the more surprising that the Basque DNA emerges so strongly in present-day Britons!

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

March 11, 2014 at 10:37

The idea of 'Basque DNA' needs some clarification: it doesn't only concern actual Basque emigrants to the British isles but also other migrants from the north coast of Spain (from Galicia to Cantabria). The western origin theory of the Celts (more and more confirmed by new data) includes their migration along the Cantabrian coast into formerly proto-Basque areas, where they intermarried with the local 'Basques' (people from the Franco-Spanish glacial refuge). Conclusion: the migration of the original Celts to the shores of the Channel also brought Basque genes to Britain, long before the Germanic invasions; it might even be the main source.
[Some versions of the western origin theory posit that Italics from the southern 2/3 of Italy and possibly the Dalmatian coast migrated by sea to the western coasts of Portugal and Galicia, where they - minus the central group of the Lusitanians - became linguistically Celtic by 'contamination' of their Italic language(s) by proto-Basque and Iberian (both 'p-less' languages causing the trademark of Celtic: loss of Indo-European initial and intervocal 'p'; modern Celtic also shares another characteristic with Basque (and maybe Iberian): ergative tendencies in certain cases]

Jan de Jong

March 20, 2014 at 09:00

Maybe you may say "Iberians" instead of "Basques" (a litle -but the surviving- part of the Iberians).
By the way, in 1776 Edward Gibbon wrote in his The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Chapter I): "As far as we can either trace or credit the resemblance of manners and language, Spain, Gaul, and Britain were peopled by the same hardy race of savages".

Pont

conor graham

March 25, 2014 at 14:32

It's hard to reconcile these two extracts:
1. 'Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else.'
2. 'One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.'
If the Celts arrived in Ireland n Scotland through England how does the author account for this inconsistency in the language spread?

Alyson

March 25, 2014 at 15:24

Re 'Bede’s “Ecclesiastical History”:
“The first inhabitants were the Britons, who came from Armenia (3), and first peopled Britain southward.”
Note:
(3) “De tractu Armoricano.” — Bede, “Ecclesiastical History” i. I. The word Armenia occurring a few lines above in Bede, it was perhaps inadvertently written by the Saxon compiler of the “Chronicle” instead of Armorica.
According to Christopher Robbins it is possible that King Arthur was a Roman leader of Sarmation cavalry, posted to Britain. 'In AD 175, the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius sent a contingent of 5,500 cataphracti - heavily armed auxiliary cavalry - to Britain from Pannonia, modern day Hungary..... they settled in Ribchester, in south-west Lancashire.... The commander ... was called Lucius Artorus Castus ..... The Sarmations, as direct descendents of the Scythians, had always been mounted warriors ..... were also known to carry dragons resembling wind socks as their battle standards. ... Just as the young Arthur draws the magical Excalibur from the earth, so the Scythian god of war is symbolized by a magical sword thrust into and drawn from the earth ... the Alan tribe who settled in Gaul, on the River Lot ..... Alan of Lot, Alanus a Lot..... a band of Alans is said to have stolen vessels from the Basilica of St Peter's ... Rome in 410 ... including a sacred gold chalice they associated with their own legend.....'
The arrival of the Armenians by this token would seem to be with the Romans, rather than earlier.

James Ensor

March 25, 2014 at 16:39

What Bede actualy wrote was "To begin with the inhabitans were all Britons,from whom the island got its name. They are reputed to have come from Amorica by ship and to have appropriated to themselves the southern part of the island." By Armorica Bede means the land that now lies around St Malo. In Breton the name means by the sea.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

March 27, 2014 at 10:51

Indeed, Alyson: Ar-mor = on (i.e. 'by') the sea.
Geographically it seems logcal that sea-faring migrants from the Cantabrian coasts first landed on the coast of Armorica (Brittany) before spreading to the somewhat farther out lying, less accessible, coasts of S. Britain. They just had to cross the Gulf of Biscay.
When, at a certain time, these migrants were linguistically Celtic (the very oldest ones being Basque-like, from the glacial refuge), it would become likely that the initial spread of Celtic languages in the Channel area/Atlantic Façade would have emerged from Armorica.
It seems likely that there were two such expansions: an older one, spreading Q-Celtic (which originated in central Spain under Basque-Iberian influence on the immigrant Italic-like Indo-European), and a later one, spreading P-Celtic, that might be the result of a local innovation in Britttany (possibly under the continuing influence of ancient indigenous populations speaking some Vasconic-Uralic language ("Old European"). That would explain why the Goidelic languages are the farthest away from Brittany (pushed to the outer margins), and the Brythonic areas the closest (including Gaul and the eastern expansion, much later). It would also imply that the Belgae spoke Q-Celtic, as opposed to the Gaulish tribes (P). [Note that Germania Cisrhenana was actually Celtic, so the Belgae being (left bank) 'Germanic' doesn't mean anything as to their language].
One reason for these Ibero-Celtic migrations could have been the quest for tin and copper (Cornwall, Wales etc.) during the early Bronze Age, something in which they were followed later by the Phoenicians who set up storage and shipping facilities on the Channel Islands.The same thing happened in S. Spain (Tartessos: Huelva, Rio Tinto..., an originally Iberian region, then Celticized and subsequently taken over by the Phoenicians).

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

March 27, 2014 at 16:10

No remains were found as far as I now (maybe some related ones near Mont Saint Michel and the Cotentin), but it is known that they used the islands to handle the materials (some say 'ingots') from SE Britain/English Channel for shipping to the Mediterranean. So, the actual operations seem to have taken place thereabout, but we don't have material proof.
I don't have the bibliography at hand, but I remember having read it in numerous places. There is however a discussion on the exact identification of the islands (or maybe coasts) described by ancient writers (Pliny, Strabo, Herodotos, and a whole series of others, and their medieval copiers); the only thing we can be sure of is that it concerns the area of the channel islands, Cornwall etc.
In the more popular realm, you can read a lot of pretty serious (non-fiction) informative stuff in "And Did Those Feet...?" by Michael Goldsworthy, Chapter 4, to be found on http://books.google.be/books?id=L9Z_pULOY0YC&pg=PT30&lpg=PT30&dq=phoenicians+and+the+channel+islands&source=bl&ots=7hRWKhyWBK&sig=BqF3ETTStG_gotLD1eEBPLrElNE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=80g0U6WuCMiqhAeTuYGwCg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBjgU#v=onepage&q=phoenicians%20and%20the%20channel%20islands&f=false

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

March 27, 2014 at 16:36

Alyson, the Amazigh speak a Berber language, i.e. belonging to the Lybico-Berber subfamily of the Afro-Asiatic family (the other branches are Semitic, Cushitic, Old Egyptian/Coptic and Chadic). Nothing to do with Gallic, which is Indo-European. The Guanches of the Canary islands were a branch of the Berbers. If anything, Tamazight is remotely but definitely related to Hebrew and Arabic for instance, or pharaonic Egyptian.
Old Icelandic is a North-Germanic language, and Old Irish is a Q-Celtic language, both belong to very diverging branches of Indo-European. I guess what the guy said meant that he could read the old letters; I'm sure he couldn't understand a word of Old Irish.
The Saami (Lapps) are a Uralic people with origins in North-Central Asia. They are very different from the Amazigh/Guanches, in all respects.

James Ensor

March 27, 2014 at 16:57

Tin was mined in Cornwall, therefore South West England. It was an essential ingredient for making bronze. And as the mines in Iberia and Bohemia became exhausted, Cornwall became the most important source of tin, in Europe. It is believed that it was shipped from Padstow to St Malo, both of which have fine natural harbours. The cargoes continued to Rome and indeed Byzantium overland. Possibly Phoenicians were amongst the merchants buying it. But it does not seem likely that they would have chosen Jersey or Guernsey, with their fierce tides, frequent thick fogs and sharp rocks as entrepots.

sapo

March 27, 2014 at 19:08

No citations regarding archaeological evidence of the presence of a Phoenician entrepot on Jersey.
I am in agreement here with the content of James Ensor's post. I am not a specialist in the area but I think he has more or less captured the 'essence' here.
There is historiographic evidence only to support the assertion that both the Phoenicians and Greeks traded with the Cornish region (Cassiterides?) in ancient times, primarily for tin ingots or tin ore. For example, the voyages of Pytheas found in Strabo. Possibly, they navigated or even went ashore on the Channel Islands but a more likely candidate for any attempt to avoid "Breton" control of the trade is the Scilly Isles. And there is archaeological evidence that the Byzantines followed the same trade route for the same reasons after the end of Roman rule in Britain. Byzantine pottery, coins, etc, has been found which has been subjected to microanalysis and carbon dating which locates it in 6th and 7th century southern Asia Minor.
In fact geographically the Channel Islands are due south-east of the traditional Cornish areas for trade in tin and it would have been strategically more feasible to find any "storage or shipping facililties" in more westerly locations on the Scilly Isles or Brittany coast. Tin was a very precious commodity of the age. The Phoenician trade in tin was under the control of the 'Bretons" of the time, the Veneti*. And, as JE remarks, the CIs are notoriously problematic regarding tides, rocks and landings.
*Champion, T. "The appropriation of the Phoenicians in British imperial ideology". Nations and Nationalism 7 (4): 451–465.
But I am yet to read any peer-reviewable paper in any journals which gives archaeological or any other form of evidence which indicates Phoenician "storage and shipping facilities on the Channel Islands". If this were the case, this would be a major discovery in Phoenician Studies. Akin to the discovery of Roman trading posts in western India. In such matters, however, as always, I reserve the right to be wrong.
For the time being, we must take Mr Selleslagh-Suykens' assertion here as purely speculative. Have any Phoenician cultural artifacts actually been found on the Channel Islands?
Some individuals subscribe to the view that the Phoenicians were in America before the Norsemen or Columbus. Whereas evidence has presented for both Columbus and the Vikings in North America, none, as yet, has been put forward in any reputable academic journal to indicate the Phoenicians in America beforehand.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

March 27, 2014 at 20:27

I think my term "storage and shipping facilities" was interpreted too literally: these activities did take place in the general region mentioned, and no material proof was found, to my knowledge. I think I mentioned all of Sapo's items in my second posting, albeit in a much shorter form. The debate is about the true identification of the Cassiterides (the CIs are just one possibility, most often mentioned), and the semi-legendary island of Ictis, often supposed to lie in the mouth of the Avon.There are somewhat similar problems with ancient Tartessos in the Huelva (Río Tinto) region of Andalusia (where shifting sands and disappeared river mouths make finding material remnants, let alone identification of the site, virtually impossible).
I believe we are all aware of the uncertainty of many facts in this matter, having to rely mainly on interpretations of ancient writers. Except about the essence: the Phoenicians did collect and ship tin (and probably also copper) from the region.

James Ensor

March 27, 2014 at 21:35

Cassiteride or tin ore has never been found on the Channel Islands. Herodotus, who lived at what is now Bodrun in Turkey was not familiar with the Atlantic islands. Maps drawn after his writings do not show the British isles, at all. But they are the most likely source for Casiiterides, as they were a major source of tin, some of which was delivered tio Byzantium, a trade with which Herodotus might have been familiar.
It seems likely that the Amoricans shipped either ingots or ore from Cornwall to Brittany and perhaps carried it further overland, before selling it to Phoenicians, who controlled much of the trade in the Mediterranean.
The Phoenicians settled around the Rio Tinto in Spain, another source of cassiteride in ancient times. Evidence for this is that the dogs native to this area the Podengo/Podeco originated in the Levant.

sapo

March 28, 2014 at 10:40

"if they (or the Scilly islands, or Ictis) played any role in the tin (and probably copper) trade, it was for temporary storage before shipping it out, i.e. as a trading post or a simple landing site"
Once again, this cannot be asserted definitively without very specific evidence to back it. You are positing a very specific, historically localised proposition for which there is no evidence whatsoever - either archaeological or historiographical. If you were presenting a paper to a journal, you would have to support such an assertion with citations and references otherwise it would be rejected by any reputable academic publication.
If I were to assert that the Roman administration used Chester (Deva) or Aqua Sulis (Bath) as a storage depot for Welsh gold, you would ask me to provide some form of evidence for that in order to support the proposition.
On this question of the tin trade in antiquity, we can only posit the most generalised conceptions based on historiographics and any archaeological evidence which may be available e.g., in regard to Byzantine trade in the post-Roman period.
Nobody knows where "Ictis" was located. It is as elusive as "Atlantis".

James Ensor

March 28, 2014 at 11:45

Phoenician dogs cannot be found north of Portugal, They are such hardy survivors amd exist all over the Mediterranean, particularly on islands, that this suggests the Phoenicians did not colonise the Channel coasts or any British islands, The dogs travelled on ships to keep down the rats, which plagued ancient mariners. They are direct descendants of the near-extinct pale-footed wolf of the Levant.
It would be a logistical nonsense in either ancient or modern transport schemes to site a depot close to the source, which required unloading and reloading of tin ore or ingot. on another island, surrounded by notoriously hazardous seas.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

sapo

March 28, 2014 at 12:11

Mr Selleslagh-Suykens, your proposition in your previous post takes the logical form of 'if X then Y'. But if there is no historically specific, geographically localisable and citable evidence to underpin the "then" within the logical form of your proposition then, of course, you are speculating. I am not discounting the implied possibility in your assertion but we cannot state it as beyond reasonable doubt in the sense that we can state that the Cornish/Breton region was a source of tin ore/ingots in antiquity.
I do not see any misunderstanding here, sir.

David Paterson

May 15, 2014 at 16:59

James,
In Norman Davies' "Vanished Kingdoms" in the essay on Alt Clut/Strathclyde (the Brythonic-speaking kingdom of the "Old North"), he provides a table comparing the counting systems of shepherds in SW Scotland, Northumberland and modern Welsh and comments:
"The correspondences are unmistakable, and they were reflected until recently in inscriptions in the old sheep market at Cockermouth. They are the very last echoes of the Old North."
An uncle of mine (b. 1908) was the son of a Galloway shepherd and told me when I was a boy (50s) that this was how they counted - but only for sheep!

R.Tredwyn

May 30, 2014 at 12:31

So Bede and Gildas were dreaming when they wrote of conflict between the Anglii (English) and the Britons? No archaeological evidence of conflict? I remember a BBC time team programme excavating saxon graves in the vicintity of the Solent and dating from the 6th century. They were speculating why the grave goods were all weapons and the corpses were armed to the teeth! It never occurred to them that the Solent would have been a frontier area in the war that lasted for 200 years from the end of Roman government around 400 to the final conquest of southern England. The battle of Dyrrham which expelled the Welsh-speaking aristocracy from the Severn valley was in 577. England is full of Celtic place names. The size of theteutonic migration may be disputed but a teutonic male ruling warrior caste replaced its celtic-speaking predecessor and of course that entailed massacres. The Arthurian legends are the folk memory of British resistance to the heathen invaders who had no more compunction about slaughtering their foes than did the Vikings later. Wales is Welsh speaking because the native aristocracy beat the Anglii off and were conquered only later by the Normans. Pre-Roman Germanic-speaking natives of these islands have no historical warrant and are a figment of the imagination of English writers uncomfortable with the notion of conquest. There was no genocide but there was plenty of killing and the extirpation of a language and culture. Stick to genetics and put away the whitewash.

sapo

May 30, 2014 at 19:08

After any conquest, the indigenous people keep speaking their own language. Only slowly is the language of the conquerors adapted and adopted into a new linguistic synthesis. For example, the pre-Norman/Norman French synthesis which took 400 hundred years to emerge. From a 'dead start' - so to speak - in the mid 5th century, the Old English speech community was supposedly dominant in less than two centuries. Really? Is that possible with centuries of historico-linguistic evolution and establishment behind it?

sapo

June 1, 2014 at 15:03

Yes, I agree. But I understand that the Normans who came were a 'common speech' community. It is thought that the Normans conquered the land with about 10,000 - 20,000 including their retinues. Those who conquered and came later must have mixed and intermarried, etc, with the indigenous people. And this must have given an impulse to linguistic development. I don't doubt what you write here about intermixing and intermarrying, etc. But my understanding is that the ruling elite tended to speak and write Norman French amongst themselves. Latin was the language of the scholar. I understand that Norman French was still spoken at court into the 13th or even 14th century. Chaucerian Middle English, I recall, became the language of the law courts at the end of the 14th century?

sapo

June 1, 2014 at 15:13

The traditional conception of the origins of the English language is well known. Its roots were transplanted into British soil after the end of the Roman occupation by the Germanic invaders in the 5th and 6th centuries. The Roman armies (and all their soldiers!) supposedly left at the beginning of the 5th century and the military vacuum was supposedly filled by these "Anglo-Saxon" invaders.They then proceeded to conquer the land and within two centuries the Old English speech community had become dominant. Prior to this, the peoples of the British Isles were all supposedly Brythonic speech communities who had become Romanised and had embraced, partly at least, Latin. The roots of the English language supposedly arrived later.
Some researchers in the relevant areas are now questioning this 'established' conception. For example, Francis Pryor in his text 'Britain AD' and Stephen Oppenheimer in his 'The Origins of the British : A Genetic Detective Story'. Moreover, ancient historiographical sources - such as Caesar's 'Gallic Wars' - also appear to point us in a different direction in regard to the roots and origins of the English language.
The languages and dialects spoken by all the different peoples and tribes of pre-Roman Britain cannot be known for definite, beyond 'all reasonable doubt' so to speak. It remains an area of open research and academic debate. It is so remote historically and there is so little historiographical and archaeological evidence regarding the specific character of the languages spoken, that this invariably invites scepticism and even speculation.
Pryor, for example, in regard to the 5th and 6th centuries, stresses the continuity in tradition over the centuries and I think he is correct when he asserts that there was not a "mass" Germanic invasion in these centuries of hundreds of thousands of "Anglo-Saxons". However, how do we account for the cultural discontinuities (within the historic continuity) in these centuries? Or do we actually need to account for them in terms of conquest? Are we looking at cultural changes as a result of mass invasions or military-cultural conquest by a Germanic warrior elite? Or could we be actually looking at a re-birth, a sort of post-Roman cultural 'Renaissance' where the cultural elements were already present throughout the Roman period? For example, in language, in actual place names in landscape, in the names of people, etc : do we actually know what local people called the areas where they lived? i.e. what words they actually used in everyday speech? Do we actually know the names which they used to address each other? Only the aristocratic elite took on Romanic culture and this was also the tendency amongst town dwellers. Most people in Roman Britain actually lived on the land and must have continued with established pre-Roman traditions. Oppenheimer raises a very interesting question : why are there so few Brythonic loan words in English? If Britain had been exclusively an assortment of enduring Brythonic speech communities in pre-Roman and Roman Britain, why did so few of their words become integrated into English after the "Anglo-Saxon" conquest? Moreover, why are there significant genetic differences (genetic markers) between the populations of south-eastern Britain and the rest of the island?
The idea of a mass invasion of hundreds of thousands of marauding Angles and Saxons, etc, in the 5th and 6th centuries sounds as implausible as such an invasion by the Romans before or the Normans after them. A military conquest of the south-eastern part of the country over many decades seems less implausible. By a Germanic miltary warrior elite which was a Western Germanic speech community. This new ruling elite then contributed to alterations in cultural changes in the course of these and subsequent centuries. Including alterations in the language. We have historical models for such a type of conquest prior to and subsequent to the post-Roman Germanic incursions and conquests in the form of the Roman and Norman conquests.
The Roman and Norman conquests did not involve many thousands of people from the continent "swamping" the indigenous culture. Cultural changes arose out of the historic-structural alterations stemming from these conquests. The Romans conquered with their legions and imposed these changes and the Normans conquered with how many? 10,000 which includes their retinues, etc. In a way, American culture has "conquered" Britain but by means of economic and political power and through the mass media but there has not been a mass migration of Americans into the country.
In other words, for these changes to have taken place in these centuries, new cultural elements could have been introduced into the post-Roman culture and become organically integrated into it. However, such post-Roman Germanic introductions could merely have re-invigorated Germanic or Brythono-Germanic elements already present throughout the Roman period inherited from the late Iron Age. These exogenous introductions then brought to life (acted as a sort of 'cultural spark') a 'Neo-Germanic Renaissance'? No mass migration is necessarily implied. And, actually, neither is an invasion from continental Europe of a Germanic military overlordship. Even before centralised Roman rule ended, these Germanic elements could already have been present in the form of Germanic legionaries, auxillaries, mercenaries, etc, and their families, etc. The Romans hired foreign mercenaries to defend the boundaries of their empire. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the inheritors of post-Roman Britain were already living and established as communities in sufficient numbers within the province of Britannia.
Hence, Germanic military "incursions" could have been "endogenous" and not the commonly and traditionally held "exogenous" incursions and conquest. This is not to discount the possibility that these endogenous communities also had exogenous contacts. The cultural changes which took place throughout the post-Roman centuries could have been, in all essentials, endogenous i.e. alterations arising organically but with some exogenous influences. With the movement of peoples around and through the Roman empire in its final centuries, this cannot be discounted.
But I think we have to consider the changes taking place in the post-Roman period in Britain as not "dark" at all but possibly as an organic evolution (with possible exogenous influences) of the conditions which existed when centralised rule from Rome ended.
The question of linguistic changes could be considered within such an evolving context. It seems to be a 'bolted development' for a whole people to be articulating a new language (Old English) - from a 'dead start' so to speak - in such a short space of historical time. With no adopted loan words from the previously and supposedly dominant Romanised Brythonic speech communities. This, however, could be taken as an argument for the 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing' of the Romano-Brythonics by the Germanics. All of them "pushed to the west" into Wales, Cornwall and Cumbria, etc. Is it possible for the indigenous languages of established speech communities to be obliterated in this way and replaced by the language of the conquerors without leaving hardly any traces in terms of loan words, etc?
Some researchers are now suggesting that conversing pre-Roman Britain was not simply of the Brythonic sub-branch of the Indo-European Language tree. It may well be that parts of the south and east of England actually spoke a language from the Germanic branch actually before the Roman or later Germanic invasions. And Oppenheimer is even suggesting that English originates from linguistic roots which are not West Germanic but of a totally different sub-branch of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European tree. That it even possibly has roots in and evolved from a sub-branch which was a hybrid of the Germanic and the Brythonic This implies that at the time of the Roman occupation, the British tribes were divided into Brythonic and Non-Brythonic speech communities, the latter already, at least if not fully, being a Germanic or Brythono-Germanic speech community in the eastern and southern tribes of the land. The northern and western tribes tending to be exclusively Brythonic in speech.
These differences are accredited to the invasions of the Belgic (Belgae) tribes about 400 years before the Roman conquest. Some sources - including Caesar in the 'Gallic Wars' - seem to suggest that their language was of the Germanic branch and not the Brythonic. Oppenheimer's work in genetics tends to support this historiographical suggestion. This would tend to suggest that the English language has deeper roots, indeed pre-Roman, and that the exit of Rome combined with the Germanic conquest merely served to give re-birth in new form and sustenance to the earlier 'Belgic' Germanic form or Belgic 'Brythono-Germanic' form. Perhaps the conception that all of Britain was 'Brythonic' in speech needs to be re-evaluated. We are so absolutely conditioned into the traditional conception that the English language starts with the 5th century. We need to consider, perhaps, the possibility that the Britons in the south-east were already speaking a Germanic or even 'Brythono-Germanic' language at the time of the invasion of the Roman legions and even three centuries before it. And that this linguistic heritage carried through and beyond the Roman occupation so that the cultural cauldron within which English finds its point of orignation is a combination (a synthesis) of this Belgic Germanic (or Belgic Brythono-Germanic) legacy and the language of the Western Germanic cousins coming to the south and east of the land in the 5th and 6th centuries.
Has the degree of disruption (discontinuity) of the post-Roman period been overrated or even "de-romanticised" into an enduring so-called "Dark Age"? Perhaps the conception of a pre-Roman (and therefore Roman) 'Belgic Germanic' or 'Belgic Brythono-Germanic' speech community in the tribes of the south and east may carry legitimacy. There is lots of food for thought and research here, both archaeological and historiographical. Is the post-Roman "lights out and into a dark age catastrophe" conception possibly a cherished romance or a 'fin de l'epoque' fantasy of the classicists or a 'commencement de l'epoch' fantasy of the Anglo-Saxonist philologists?

Alyson

June 1, 2014 at 16:18

The more evidence brought to this discussion, the more it seems that the Romans are the cause of so much inward migration. it is recorded that the Roman Empire used skilled armies from different areas to subdue local peasantry, putting in place taxes and rulers, supported by skilled in-comers, much as most empires have done since. Forced migration would have brought troops and skilled industries, and perhaps my favourite image in the primary school history book I learned from, long ago, was of a cross section of a Roman road. The Romans built roads across the Empire, allowing the easy transport of goods and people from far apart.
Germanic and Belgic peoples may have arrived independently or been introduced as part of the seeding of conflict used by the Romans to pit one group against another in order to keep the different groups under the yoke of Roman rule.
The Norman conquest happened because of the English respect for feudal rule by dukes and land-owners, so that a battle once lost required the giving up of territory together with the people in it. The Welsh had no such feudalism and were not conquered until the end of the 14th century. There may have been 10,000 killed at Chester in the 6th century, pushing the language back into the hills, but the leaders never ceded control over the people; indeed it was said that as soon as one leader was defeated another would stand in his place and the battle was never over. They refused to work the fields for the conquerors, preferring to be killed than enslaved.
The end of the 14th century however saw the laws of Hywel Dda (Howel the Good) relegated to only applying to Welsh people in Wales and not to English people in Wales. The laws of primogeniture and property law were imposed gradually on a people who had far more equality that the English, and greater respect for the rights of women as inheritors of property and authority.
The history as told by the 7th century Taliesin reports on tribal differences, recorded in poem and song, and as I have said above, the introduction of horsemen, or horse-worshippers, (as led by Cartimandua, queen of north Cumbria) who were much like the mediaeval knights a thousand years later, and who may have brought apples from Khazakhstan, and legends which were also assimilated after Artorus was made ruler of the south-west. I would also be interested to learn whether the Allens of Yorkshire have Khazakh or Hungarian DNA, such as Mr Robbins alleges might have been the origin of Alanus a Lot, or Alan of Lot in Northern France (Lancelot).
Finally climate and plague caused changes in demographics. The Roman armies that returned to Italy were decimated by plague and starvation. The Dark Ages were indeed dark, and crops failed, people fled barren lands, and the tree rings show that the weather was affected for decades following the departure of the Romans.
Only now is evidence being uncovered that suggests the earth may have been passing through a dust cloud in space, and may have had more impacts, such as have been suggested may be the cause of a line of vitirified hill forts from Edinburgh to the Solent, and as may be a reason for the falling star in the centre of St Columba's stone celtic cross erected in Scotland after his arrival in 567 AD.

James Ensor

June 28, 2014 at 09:23

The absence of Basque place names and language in modern England and English is certainly a puzzle, given that 70% of the DNA in all countries of the British islands are closely related to Basque and indeed Breton.
This surely suggests intermarriage between later invaders and earlier inhabitants rather than a mass slaughter. It is still possible to detect words of Norse, Gaelic and presumably Pictish origin in the regional dialects of the far north and far west. But there is little sign of Basque.
Perhaps the complex langage just died out too long ago. Modern english is an amalgam of old German and Norman French - still spoken in the Channel islands where it is called the Patois. We can tell that the Normans formed the nonility and the German speakers the peasantry from the existence of two words for many animals used as food - for instance swine and pork, sheep and mutton, cow and beef. Quite where pig and dog came from still seems unclear.
One clue to the disappearance of place lies in towns spelled Beaulieu and Cambois, as they would be in Norman French. But they are pronounced in the original Gaelic. Perhaps the same happenned to Basque at a much earlier date. Or possibly the original Basque had been lost even before these early Britons sailed across the Channel.
Incidentally Roman DNA seems to be quite limited , and many legionaires who stayed behind came from Lusitania now Portugal and Croatia. Rome recruited soldiers from across the Empire and moved them to wherever they were needed. The very different DNA of their descendants has been identified around Chester.

Rikiwulf

June 29, 2014 at 19:25

I am a descendant of Rikiwulf in Flanders in the 9th century. The name suggests an origin from East Anglia. FamilytreeDNA accepted me in their Anglo-Saxon project. Yet my haplogroup is R-U152 with L2- which suggests a Celtic origin. Could the East Anglian wulfinga have a Celitic origin? Who can solve this puzzle for me?

Rikiwulf

June 30, 2014 at 14:11

I have a complete familytree of all my namesakes going back to 1350, and only one male went to England as a merchant in the 17th century. Maybe he he left some offspring behind, but that would not have been sufficient to contaminate the English population...
Could it be that the Angles made a stopover in Flanders on their way to Britain? There is a place named Engelen in s`Hertogenbosch, and in my haplogroup there is a Dutchman named Engelen, who is closely related.
It think it all boils down to the question: Were the Angles Celts? So far only David Faux seems to think so. Is there anyone else out there?

James Ensor

June 30, 2014 at 14:41

It is quite well established that the Angles inhabited an area on the Baltic Coast between Flensburg and Slesvig. Part of the area is still called Angeln. Today this is in Germany, but until 1870 it was in Denmark. There is no doubt that the language that they spoke was a form of old German. They travelled by ship to the East Coast of England across the North Sea. Some could easily have landed on the coast of Holland or Flanders. Equally Celts from a bit further south along the Channel Coast could also have pushed northwards.
As Maria suggests there must have been much inter-marriage, between tribes, some in ancient times as well as modern.

Eduard Selleslagh-Suykens

June 30, 2014 at 15:58

Actually, the question whether certain people were Celts or not is basically meaningless from a genetic point of view: 'Celt' is largely a cultural-linguistic concept, and since almost all later 'Celtic' peoples in Europe were the product of aculturation, they have no clear genetic afiliation: they are just 'Europeans' of regionally variable mixed stock. Only the first Celtic pioneers out of N. Spain (probably to Cornwall and Brittany) might have had a slightly better identifiability, but even that is not obvious, because even the birthplace of Proto-Celtic (Central Spain) had already a mixed population of a prehistoric Paleolithic population (out of the Basque Glacial Refuge) and of small groups of Neolithic migrants from the Adriatic area that brought an Italoid Indo-European language and agriculture to the Peninsula ca. 5,500 BCE (Impresso-Cardial Ware people). BTW, the old 'central European origin theory' of Celtic is falling rapidly in disrepute because of incompatible chronology and advances in linguistics.

James Ensor

June 30, 2014 at 17:13

Celtic or Gaelic speaking people are commonly asociated with several variants of the R1b gene, This is often associated with the presence of red hair and pale skin. The most promininent in Britain is the L21 with its subclade M222 found in Northern Ireland and south-western Scotland. R1b Z96 is found in south-western France and Iberia and also classed as Celtic-speaking, R1b U152 is found in central Europe and Italy where people spoke a different version of Gaelic known as p-celtic. However Eduard is a noted expert on this subject so I will defer..
R1b-U106, also thought to be connected with celtic speakers were people who migrated from the Alpine valleys to the Low Countries and Friesland. So it is not surprising to find this gene in Holland. There is a lot of red hair in Flanders.
Red hair is also found in Siberia, thought to be associated with a migration of peoples from central Europe."

Maria

June 30, 2014 at 17:46

@James Ensor: About red hair. I know Belgium pretty well living in NL, and I'm afraid I can't agree with you about there being a lot of red hair there! In any case I myself have never seen much of it in that country. Maybe I just had bad luck! (there isn't a lot of it in NL either, for that matter)
However there are (in my experience) a lot more people with red hair in Italy, especially in Siena and Bologna and in the north. Even in Naples red hair is not uncommon.
Red hair is thought by some to have originated with the Vikings. It is fairly common in the UK at least in the west, and many people associate it with the Irish. However the classic Irish colouring is dark brown hair, pale skin and light eyes (blue or green). Quite a few Irish do have red hair but possibly this is due to the Viking presence in Ireland. The Viking theory is borne out by the fact that red hair is fairly often seen in Scotland.

Rikiwulf

Reality

November 20, 2014 at 12:45

This is racial insanity, both of my parents have Norwegian, German, and British ancestry and I have Dark brown Hair, brown eyes, and a slight olive skin tone that tans very deep in the summer. You can't judge someone off of what their hair, eye and skin color are. More often then not you will be very wrong. The original Caucasoid race since leaving Africa had Dark Hair, Eyes, and skin. Since all of those characteristics are genetically Dominant traits which means they would, and will eventually, outbreed blonde hair blue eyes. This alone is proof that since that point in time that "phenotype" has existed amongst white people. From Southern Italy and Spain, To the most northern reaches of Russia, Scandinavia, and Scotland, there has existed people of dark features. I pray that anyone who disagrees with me please put down your copy of Mein Kampf and open your eyes to the world around you. Thank you.

Rikiwulf

R.Tredwyn

December 1, 2014 at 20:51

I cannot understand these frequent assertions that England has few Celtic place names. Look at river names. There are ouses and avons all over England. As someone has pointed out, Roman settlements all had names derived from Celtic. The genetic evidence is what it is but there is no evidence at all for large numbers of Teutonic-speaking Britons in pre-Roman times. The lack of Welsh influence on English is not total, the present continuous and the word Dad, indicate some influence but it's paucity is explained by the inferior status of Welsh after the conquest. Using Welsh words would have been seen as a mark of inferiority. The other factor is plague. The second Anglo-Saxon expansion after 500 was facilitated by an outbreak of plague among the Britons, imported from the Mediterranean, which affected the Anglo-Saxons much less. A drop in population would change the balance between an Anglicised Kent and East Anglia and the Brythonic speaking rest of the country.

R.Tredwyn

December 1, 2014 at 21:04

It is quite possible that the Anglo-Saxon invasion was partly "endogenous" there being Germanic legionaries and the mercenaries of the Saxon shore.. The Roman period may well have seen Teutonic immigration but the Gauls spoke p-Celtic so there is no reason to doubt the traditional interpretation when Caesar says the Beitons spoke the same. Language disappearance is not unknown. Afrikaners are as much French Huguenots as Durch, as names like Du Plessis and Marais indicate. Yet modern Afrikaans is Dutch with a strong English influence and no sign of French.

Ralph V

December 17, 2014 at 18:39

Funny reading these posts. Been trying to study who the Romans really were and reading these posts finding so many confused. Romans may have been a Latin tribe or maybe not. Looking at their portraits you get a sense they were different. Original Romans all burned their dead. When Christianity came the Romans were an extreme mixture of people as were the army. Original Roman soldiers were easily superior to other Europeans. (If in fact that were European) Looking at their military and weaponry different conclusions result. always out numbered and standard weaponry that not as great as you would think. They used power and quickness to win their battles. They looked way more powerful than other Europeans, perhaps not as tall. Tacitus and others always built up their foes as fierce giants..etc so that it makes their victory back home look amazing. Look at all the portraits and you know the truth. Dacians,Celts and Germans are not as muscular at all. The Roman battles of just roll over others using their shields and short swords not strategy at all, just raw power.
Romans do not look like modern day Italians at all, who run the gamut of appearances. Again, Romans have a muscularity that is not very Caucasian looking. Their skin tone and hair color is in general middle of the road. Their facial appearance in general not very attractive at all. Who were they?
So how can you find these genetic markers in Britain? Not so simple.

betty peters

December 22, 2014 at 07:50

I'm sorry I don't have time to read all of this, but, wondered if the fact that England was part of the mainland of Europe at one time. I understand that for a long period of time that at low tide people could travel from england to the main land and that the isolation that finely happened is where the "problem", came about.

Alyson

January 5, 2015 at 19:32

Good point, Betty! Reading through the original article that thought just struck me too. Dogger Bank has been mapped and shown to have villages, hills and river beds which were lost when the sea level rose 6000 years ago. This would have given the east of England the same genetic mix as the west of Europe, while the western coasts of Britain would have been populated from overseas or 'armorica' as a mix of Roman and Celtic stem words would suggest with travel by sea easier than over mountains and through forests.
The Basques are found in the area of Northern Spain where some of the earliest human settlements are preserved in caves with rock paintings from the time when Neanderthals were still part of the mix. Armenia, apples and the origins of humanity are just features of a puzzle with much more to reveal through genetic mapping, archaeology and linguistics.

Bill

January 8, 2015 at 02:45

I cannot argue one way or another with the knowledgeable and expert opinions voiced by some here. I did recently find it fascinating , however, that despite the genealogical research I had undertaken from which I concluded that I was 65% English, particularly from my being able to trace my family for five to six generations (counting myself) in Lancashire--my DNA results from Ancestry came back 79% Irish, only 12% English and the next highest percentage at 4% Iberian Peninsula I do not know of course how much reliance to place on the test, but it might show that nationality and genealogy may possibly be trumped by genetics.
Bill

Norman

Maritxu

March 11, 2015 at 23:25

Reg:Sergio Garcia,you are wrong in many ways,just one = the Basque don't move to the Pyrenees when the Romans invasion,the Basque been there Always,don't need to move,second basque is NOT dialects is a language,the oldest in Europe.
Maria

Astures

April 2, 2015 at 18:17

The Basques were described as Celtiberians by Roman sources. In fact, the Basques, then recognized by their tribal denominations as Cantabirians and Astures, waged two guerrilla wars against the forces of Augustus. If they were Celts, how does this preclude a majority of their British genetic brethren from being Celts? Celt, as with German, is indicative of culture. People of British ancestry waste vast amounts of time seeking an Italic bloodline to confirm their Roman authenticity. Yet, Caracalla made all persons living within the borders of the empire citizens. Therefore, ancestors that may have lacked Italian blood were still as Roman as the next Egyptian. If someone can point out a destinctive celtic gene that dates to the urnfeld population, I might concede that their more than a cultural definition of Celt. Otherwise, the Brits as with the Basques, were both Celts and Romans via culture and treaty. Likewise, the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon and Norse languages and the British inhabitants unwillingness to revert to basic Romantic vocabulary (e.g. English:Window, Danish: Vindue, Norwegian: Vindu vs. Swedish: Fönster, German: Fenster, French: Fenêtre, **Latin: Fenestra) tells me that the culture of the Northern Germanic peoples was deeply ingrained. In this regard, so were the actual northern Germanic peoples... The Picts and later Scots (until the 1740s) never surrendered their language to Northern Germanic invasions. This convinces me that a significant migration changed the entire social framework of Britain via migration. Let's not forget that only makes carry the Y chromosome, which excludes mothers from passing on evidence of their origin. I also wonder what effect population loss from subsequent plagues (bubonic in the 13th and 14th centuries) and major conflicts like WWI had on reducing the Y chromosome pool. Those are my thoughts, thanks for lending your time to read whether you agree or disagree.

Geoffrey Tobin

May 20, 2015 at 11:59

Astures, in your comment about Y chromosomes, you seem to have forgotten mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which is contributed by mothers only. Thus, both our patriline and our matriline are preserved in our DNA. (It would therefore make good sense for males to have a double-barrelled surname: one for male-line ancestors, the other for the female-line; women should have at least a female-line surname.)

Rikiwulf

May 11, 2015 at 08:28

I read that the Picts in Scotland had the same SNP marker S530 as the Basques. Maybe this is the key to the relationship between the Basques and the Brits? Apparently, Basques moved to Britain after the ice age was over. If this is true, we can forget about the Romans as bringing R-U152 to British shores.

Arsenal1Again

June 5, 2015 at 20:53

If you count how many generalisations are made through the article, most notably the following assertions .... "There were many later invasions" ..... "Many myths about the Celts" .... "There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement" .... "Many archaeologists still hold this view" .... are a ploy to get a large percentage of non-thinking readers to nod with blind acceptance.
Speaking of tribes several thousand years ago is pure conjecture, There was no written documentation from that time, nobody keeping historical records and not even pictures backing up anything said here.
So let us look at some facts, written by historians at the time.
The Romans during their rule over the Britons for 400 years gave Roman citizenship to those who served and many did. They served overseas as part as legions. Also the Legions who came to Britannica from overseas were a mix of races throughout the Roman Empire earning their citizenship, Considering the population of Britons was 250,000 to 300,000 when the Romans arrive in 44 BC .... and over 3 million by AD 410, do the math regarding the claim invading forces had insignificant impact on the genetics of Britons today. Ridiculous claims.
After the Romans pulled out their started the invasion of the Germanic tribe called the Angles which is where East Anglia gets its name from. After these settled, other Germanic tribes also came and most notably the Saxons. They did not want to mix their genes with the Britons/Romans and make them stronger, so the Saxons allied themselves with the Angles who were from the same race - hence Anglo-Saxon. Yet professor says, "Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.”
Are you getting he picture? Ignoring the additional generalisation "Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists" .... The Anglo Saxons and there history were chronicled by the Northumberland Monks and others in Wessex. The Old English Saxon word for Angles was Enŋlas (singular Enŋl) which is where the modern word ENGLISH derives from and I am not a historian or a professor.
Who are the historians which Professor Oppenheimer refer to? Obviously not British historians.
I stated above how much the population of Britons increased after the Romans 1100% during the Roman era, but the Anglo-Saxons ruled and continued flooding Britannia for the next 600 years until the Normans invaded them and won - then flooded Britain with Normans.
The Normans were Vikings who settled in Northern France, the Anglo-Saxons called the Vikings North Men or in the Saxon Old English, Norphmenn which is where the name Normann derives from. Vikings/North Men were ANOTHER Germanic tribe and despite their presence in Britain being tolerated grudgingly by the Christian Anglo-Saxons who disliked their Pagan offerings, ... their genetics had a bigger impact with the arrival of the Normans. But Professor Oppenheimer wants you to believe Britons have more in common with tribes several thousand years ago from Basque. Remember the descendents from these managed to only increase to 250,000-300,000 people in 5000 years before the arrival of the Romans - but increased by 3 MILLION over the next 4 centuries?
And I'm not even a professor or a historian.
The Anglo-Saxons called a Briton Wealh. The plural for this was Wealas and it's where the word WALES comes from. They were called this because that is where most of them went - hence the reason it's commonly known by the British that the Welsh are closer related to the Britons.
And I'm not even a professor or a historian. I hate it when people have 'Dr' and 'Professor' in front of their name and whatever they say is presumed correct.
As for the Basque theory of Professor Oppenheimer and it is only a theory - even if the Britons were descended from Basque, their small population was swamped by mixed races throughout the Roman empire, then there came the Germanic Angles, then the Germanic Saxons, then the Germanic Vikings, then the Germanic Normans ... are you seeing the GERMANIC impact?
By the way the Anglo-Saxons called all the Scandinavian people Norphmenn whether they were from Denmark or not. The ones who settled here and were tolerated were called Danes and the Vikings or as there called in Saxon Old English 'Wicŋas' were all a mix from the North Germanic tribes covering the whole of Scandinavia.

sapo

July 25, 2015 at 10:57

There is no evidence to suggest that the whole of the island was either Brythonic or Goedelic speech communities. Caesar in his writings states that the Belgae were a people who spoke the language of the Gauls to the west. But the eastern section of the Belgae spoke a language similar to the tribes east of the Rhine (i.e. Germanic). Belgic tribes entered Britain from 300 BCE onwards. Moreover, during the Roman occupation, Belgic settlements took place in the 1st and 2nd centuries when the Roman administration doled out land to these settlers. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that the whole of south eastern Britain was universally one of Brythonic speech communities. We need to keep our minds open to new possibilities. I personally think that the roots of the English language predate the 5th century.
"Anglo-Saxon"?? The term Anglo-Saxon - like the term "Celt" - is a modern invention. The tribes of Britain did not identify themselves by these designations. For example, the tribes which the Romans called the Iceni or Parisi would never have identified themselves as "Celts". And the peoples of eastern Briton in the 5th to 9th century would never have called themselves "Anglo-Saxons" or "English". England (Engeland) as a term of identification only arises with political unification in the last two centuries before the Norman conquest. Just as the term "British" is a political designation arising out of the act of unification at the start of the 18th century. Before this there was no "British". In the first millenium CE, peoples identified themselves by clan and tribal affiliations and the notion of being "Anglo-Saxon" or "Celt" or even "Viking" would have been as strange to them as 5th century inhabitant of today's Brittany calling themselves "French" or even "Franks".

sapo

July 25, 2015 at 11:11

There is a possibility here that Germanic speech communities existed in Britain prior to and all through the Roman occupation and that English has linguistic roots in these communities. And that, essentially, what is referred to as the "Anglo-Saxon invasions and conquest" was largely an endogenous conquest (possibly allied with external/mercenary influences). Certainly, no mass migrations took place from the continent. Both the Roman and Norman invasions were military conquests (Romans with 4 or 5 legions plus their retinues and the Normans with no more than 30,000 individuals inclusive of retinue)

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